Woroni Edition Six 2017

Woroni Issue 6, Vol. 67. Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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My Get-intowhitehouse-free card

Lest We Forget: The Frontier Wars

Doing Nothing as a Political Act

Are you ready to fake it til you masc it?

Rewriting the narrative of ANZAC Day

Grad jobs: it’s not you, it’s me

I (TH)INK NOt: THE EVOLUTION OF TATTOO CULTURE Getting under your skin and deep into history

STUDENTS FIGHT BACK Lindell, Hugh Tex t: Jasper x Koslowski, McClure, Ma ina-Beven Bella Di Matt

pus acinent ANU cam A group of prom a voca l protest against tivists launched proposed changes to t’s the governmen g at Parliament House in nd fu ty universi e treasurt, just after th Budget gh ni t ge s on Bud hi n ve son, had gi er, Scott Morri speech.

News disrupted a Sk y ent so al rs te es ot The pr Parliam the lawns of broadcast on e presentth nd hi ding be slogans.

House by stan s while chanting ers w it h banner from the ed the banners n they at sc nfi co e lic Po whe t 16 protesters group of abou iament House, where rl approached Pa chant against the govto d ue in nt co they als. os op ernment’s pr chuck the ould be free, ‘Education sh a,’ they chanted. se Libera ls in the

The group also called for the education minister to come out of the building and meet with them. ‘[The government] want us to pay thousands and thousands of dollars more while giving millions of dollars of tax cuts to Turnbull’s mates at the big end of town – which is just absolutely disgusting,’ one of the protesters told the group, as they stood opposite police protecting the front entrance of Parliament House.

‘And we are here tonight when this Budget is being handed down to say to government, you know, that students are going to fight,’ she said.

She said that students on campuses all over the country had come out to oppose the cuts proposed by the government since they were announced before the Budget.

PROTESTS LAUNCHED AGAINST FEE RISES, UNI CUTS

She described the politicians as ‘filthy, filthy, filthy, disgusting excuses for human beings’, saying that their proposals would be vehemently opposed by students around the country.

‘Some might see it as destructive. But what’s not destructive about making students pay more for their education?’

‘We are here because we demand, you know, more funding for education.’

‘It’s important for students to directly tell the minister for education what we think,’ she said.

Many of the protestors who were at Parliament House on Tuesday night were also part of the group which disrupted Birmingham’s speech at the National Press Club the week before. Birmingham described the protest as ‘side entertainment’ before continuing his address.

Vanamali Hermans, who was among the group of protesters at Parliament House and the Press Club, told Woroni that she expects student protests against the government’s proposals, which she described as ‘fee deregulation by stealth’, would get bigger.

The National Union of Students education officer, Anneke Demanuele, said that she supported the protest which disrupted the education minister’s speech at the Press Club in Canberra.

‘Any time Simon Birmingham or any Liberal MP sets foot on campus and tries to push this agenda they will be met by equal force,’ she said.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Contents comment

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Lest We Forget: The Frontier Wars Anthony Merlino

Beautiful Failures: Masculinities and Mental Health Bolwen Fu

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‘Dear Union Court’ Eleanor Armstrong 12

A Brief Eulogy to ANU BAR Kirsty Dale When ANU Gains from Climate Change, We All Lose Bella Himmelreich 14

Immigration Changes: Necessary or Xenophobic?

Varun Bajekal 15

Stifled Voices: Women in Philosophy Through the Eyes of Fiona Jenkins Anthony Merlino 16

Give Nick Kyrgios a Break: Apart from his Tennis he’s not for Idolising Michael Gimmel 17

Doing Nothing as a Political Act Matt Rogers 19

New Elections, Fresh Hope?

Why You Should Care About the Presidential Election in Korea.

Sang Myung Lee 20

The Apotheosis of Ahok Kevin Marco Tanaya 21

An Invitation to Execution: Chechnya’s Anti-LGBTQI+ Purge Rotem Nusem 22

Lotus Footprints Una Chen Prompted 23

Lire Avec Un Regard Neuf Harriet Kesby Dhinggaa Gaba! (Good Meat!)

Mark Ellison and Nina Gruenewald 24

Fresh Christine Song 26

Is it Important to Look ‘Fresh’ as Possible?

Phoebe Lupton Feed the Haigers Kate Lewis Exploring Masculinities pull-out 27

Today, I Turned Man Oliver Friedmann

The Blooming of Soft Masculinity: Flower Boys and K-Pop Kilau Setanggi Timur

Bodies on the Runway: Modelling Masculinities Lauretta Flack 31

Man Up, Son Eben Ejdne 32

Dear Woroni: Why Does it Feel Like We Live in an Age of Anxiety?

Mary-Anne Nolan Which Abandoned ANU Shopping Trolley Are You? Liv Ireland The Unfortunate and Limited Finality of Orgasms Phoebe Hamra 47

Your Guide to Canberra’s Best Study Cafes Sara Gillespie

My Get-Into-Whitehouse-Free Card Lewis Pope

Learn

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Making it More than Toxic Aggression Tobias Nevile

Solar Highway: The ACT’s Renewable Energy Journey Lottie Twyford

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Breaking Point Dillon Vibes 35

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Re-Framing Our Future With a Green Collar Economy Lydia J Kim

Evolving Masculinities: A Two Way Street Nick Wyche

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Culture

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I (Th)Ink Not: The Evolution of Tattoo Culture Gene Pinter 37

An Encounter With Freedom Mahalia Crawshaw The Trouble With Art Felix Ryan 38

Seeing the Unseen: The Artistic Heritage of The Young Pope Louis Pradolin Becker

3D Organ Printing: A Prospective Future?

Sachini Poogoda The Millennial Expense Investigation Luigi Falasconi

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How to Quit While You’re Still Ahead Joyce Zhang

Love, Hate, Indifferent Michael Gimmel Outrage Over Lack of Familial Shock Upon Announcing Canberra Move Ollie Brown Gucci or Garbage: Haute Couture’s Permission to Throw Everything Away Elizabeth Harris 56

Comic Caitlin Setnicar Sudoku Sebastian Rossi Cryptic Crossword NWJ

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Yashi Compares: Documentaries Yashi Kotnala

STUDENTS FIGHT BACK CONTINUED THE FIGHT CONTINUES Student activists around Australia are gearing up for a national day of action (NDA) on Wednesday, in response to federal government proposals that would see student fees increase, young people potentially face drug testing before receiving welfare payments and scant effort to make housing more affordable.

The coordinated protests, which are being organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) with campus activists and student unions, will see demonstrations take place on campuses across the country. At the ANU, protesters will meet at Union Court at 12.30pm to condemn the federal government’s changes to the higher education funding model.

The ANUSA education officer, Robyn Lewis, said that it would be financially unsustainable for graduates to pay their student loans back when earning a salary a ‘long way below’ the median income.

The federal education minister, Simon Birmingham, said that the changes

would amount to a ‘modest’ fee increase. ‘Students will face a small increase that on a weekly basis equates to about $17 for the highest level of fee increase that any student could possibly face,’ he said.

It is believed that members of the NUS and the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), as well as Unions ACT, will be present at the NDA event in Union Court on Wednesday.

But Lewis urged students to ‘get active on this issue’.

The education committee is currently sourcing supplies, such as posters and megaphones, for the event. All previous posters were confiscated by the AFP following similar protests against student funding.

‘Students have fought back successfully against this government before, and we can do so again,’ she told Woroni.

The president of the NUS, Sophie Johnston, said that there was ‘nothing fair about this Budget’ and that it had ‘no sign of opportunity’ for young people.

‘This is war on young people and we’ll be fighting back,’ Johnston told reporters in Canberra on Budget night.

Issues relating to this year’s Budget were discussed at the ANUSA Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, 10 May. The committee has maintained an active presence in Union Court since the release of the Budget, consulting with students.

We would also like to acknowledge that this land – which we benefit from occupying – was stolen, and that sovereignty was never ceded.

Within this ongoing echo of colonialism, we commit – as sub-editors and editors – to amplify the voices and stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at our university.

We will honour the diversity of their stories and stand by their right to recognition.

Board of Editors

staff and Sub-Editors

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Review: Idaho Victoria Fay

We pay our respects to Elders past and present and emerging.

sATIRE

sport

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We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Woroni, Woroni Radio and Woroni TV are created, edited, published, printed and distributed.

Ben Freeman: Student and Ultramarathon Swimmer

Corporations as Advocates: A Mixed Story Nick Blood

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OMGYES Phoebe Hamra Rodel Tapaya at the NGA Diana Tung

Acknowledgement of Country

Editor in Chief: Bronte McHenry Managing Editor: Kat Carrington Deputy EiC/Radio Editor: Finn Pedersen Content Editor: Lauretta Flack Radio Editor: Oscar Jolly TV Editor: Kanika Kirpalani Art Editor: Joanne Leong News Editor: Jasper Lindell

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Religion Meets 808’s: How Kendrick Lamar Made Spirituality Gangsta Ismail Hammoud Seth Sentry Plays It Safe at Transit Ruben Seaton

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Woroni understands that the ANUSA education officer, Robyn Lewis, had discussed planned student protests with police following the protest at the National Press Club and at Parliament House on Budget night. Of particular concern was the safety of the Chancellery from protest groups in coming weeks.

The NUS is calling on students to a petition against the government’s Budget measures. On Friday evening it sat at 500 signatures short of its 7,000-signature goal.

Admin Assistant: Arun Murali Financial Controller: Brendan Greenwood Business Development: Fred Weber Marketing: Mark Manantan Social Media: Laura Mendoza Garcia Instagram: Tony Gu Event Guide: Mehar Chawla Comment: James Atkinson Comment: Nick Wyche International: Nathalie Rosales Cheng Features: Amanda Dheerasekara Multilingual: Rosalind Moran Arts: Phoebe Hamra Reviews: Alex Green Life & Style: Georgia Leak Environment: Grace Dudley Science: Jenny Tinston Business & Economics: Victor Sukeerth Munagala Sport: Ollie Brown Creative Writing: Nadia Kim Creative Writing: Emilie Morscheck Satire & Humour: Eleanor Armstrong News: Isabella Ostini News: Lorane Gaborit News: Max Koslowski News: Isabella Di Mattina-Beven News: Hugh McClure News: Josie Ganko Distributor and Radio Presenter Liason: Loretta Lackner Radio Technical Officer: Will Fletcher Music: Cosmo White Social Media: Poppy Perry-Evans Events & Sports: Stephanie David Art: Rowan Everard Design: Katie Ward Design: Julia Hammer Television Manager: Bremer Sharp Camera Operator: Shasha Ma Reporter: Casley Rowan Reporter: Jemimah Cooper Reporter: Linda Chen Photography: Dillon Vibes Photography: Chloe Tredea Photography: Marwan Elhassan Photography: Christine Song

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

NEW ANU DEGREE DESIGNED AROUND ATAR PLUS SYSTEM Text: Bronte McHenry

The ANU Bachelor of Health Science will be introduced in 2018 and will use the ATAR Plus system to select students.

Students will be required to have achieved a 90 ATAR, plus fill out a supplementary form with questions addressing community engagement, and to provide documentation supporting their claims.

The associate dean of the School of Medicine, David Kramer, explains that, in selecting students, the School is looking for candidates with a certain set of attributes.

‘We are looking for young people that are focused not just on themselves, but focused on community and focused on society.

‘They are the type of people we want working as doctors and in health, so we want to give them the extra ability to get past the selection point,’ Kramer said.

The Bachelor of Health Science will not only foster science skills, but complement those with health science knowledge and the ability to make decisions.

The degree will be focused on developing skills to enable graduates to contribute to health in the broader sense, with potential employment

outcomes including working to shape government health policy and assisting NGOs, as well as practicing medicine.

‘These students will then have the ability in their careers to be leaders in health policy within their profession,’ Kramer said.

The School of Medicine, which does not currently have an undergraduate program, intends to enrol 60 students in the course next year. Of these 60 spots, 15 will be reserved exclusively for rural and Indigenous students.

‘The School has a strong desire to have Indigenous students in the program.

‘Having Indigenous health leaders will lead to better health outcomes, and having Indigenous doctors in the clinics will lead to better outcomes’, explained Kramer, but ‘support structures are essential as these applicants may not have had the same educational advantages as other students.’

It is also a Commonwealth requirement that universities enrol 27 per cent of students in postgraduate medicine have a rural background.

Kramer explains that this is because the Commonwealth Government is ‘responsible to the people of Australia in terms of fulfilling workforce needs, and for a very long time having doctors work in rural areas outside of major urban centres has been challenging.

‘A lot of general practitioners have been getting older, and there aren’t enough junior doctors to fill these places. So you can have communities that are unserved by healthcare and that is just not a good outcome’, he said.

The Bachelor of Health Science eventuated because The School of Medicine was struggling to enrol enough rural students in the Doctor of Medicine and Surgery (MChD).

‘You’re not going to get rural students from that [95 ATAR and above] population, especially not three out of 10.

‘With the bonus points, we think that an 85 as a base ATAR represents a very high achieving rural student’, Kramer explained, in response to a question about the selection criteria for the Bachelor of Health Science.

Of the 60 students who will be enrolled in the degree, up to 30 could qualify for a direct pathway into MChD without sitting the GAMSAT. Of these 30 spots, 10 will be reserved for rural and Indigenous students.

For two years, students interested in this pathway will take two core subjects per semester, plus chemistry in their first year.

Offers for the pathway into MChD will be made after the second year, as Kramar believes they will have enough information on academic ability by then.

news

Admission will not be based on a straight GPA, however, but the best 14 out of 16 subjects from the twoyear period.

‘We don’t want to cause issues with students where first two years are so intense that they are out of the game. They can have a bad subject’, Kramer explained.

Those who are accepted will then have the third year of their degree to do subjects of their choice without having to maintain a GPA. ‘If they get into the program then in the third year they get the freedom to do whatever they want to do. I am hoping they go study abroad or take on really difficult subjects just because they are interested.

‘It is a bit of a different philosophy, but it is a pathway,’ Kramer explained.

This philosophy is rooted in concerns about mental health issues and burnouts when studying medicine.

‘Postgraduate medicine is very challenging,’ Kramer explained, ‘and 18 - 20 year olds are under pressure to do other things at the ANU and find themselves.’

Ultimately, Kramer hopes that the Bachelor of Health Science will offer a ‘continuity of support’ to give students the best chance of succeeding and excelling in their postgraduate ventures.

STUDENTS INCREASE CALLS FOR FOSSIL FREE ANU Text: Isabella Ostini

Protesters gathered outside the Chancellery building last Friday morning, calling on the ANU to divest fully from companies which extract fossil fuel.

Talks. Even a two-degree increase would lead to increased flooding, changed coastal environments, and significant ecosystem damage in Australia.

The vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, who spoke to the protesters on his way into the Chancellery, expressed his support for the goal of a two-degree limit, and noted the importance of climate action, Around 40 students, staff, alumni but said that now was not the time for a and community members called for strategy of total divestment. the demands for a ‘fossil free ANU’ to be recognised on the committee’s The group’s responses were mixed. agenda.

ANU student Bella Himmelreigh told Woroni that she ‘found it heartening, The protest was timed to coincide that Schmidt recognises that the with a meeting of the university’s two-degree limit is important, but finance committee to discuss the frustrating that he doesn’t realise university’s investment plans. divestment is a crucial step.’

Under particular focus was the reinvestment of the university in four resource-extraction companies, including Santos, whose climate policy commits to a four-degree increase in global temperatures.

Another speaker argued that ‘Brian Schmidt can whizz around in his Tesla … but the university’s still a wet blanket in terms of leadership’ on climate change.

Speakers also pointed out the lack of This limit is twice as much as the two attention to climate change in this degrees above pre-industrial levels year’s federal Budget, and hoped agreed on during the Paris Climate that the actions of Fossil Free ANU

members could bring more notice to, and discussion around, the issue.

The protest aimed to create enough noise that divestment ‘has to go on the [finance committee’s] agenda.’

Himmelreigh, who also questioned Schmidt when he recently appeared on Q&A, expressed frustration at the university’s response to ongoing pressure from the organisation.

‘ANU doesn’t think we should be involved in the decision-making process,’ she said, noting that despite being willing to meet with representatives of Fossil Free ANU, the university appears uninterested in acceding to their demands.

‘It’s clear that meetings don’t make much difference, and we need a public display to get stuff moving.’

The protest included a wide crosssection of the Canberra community.

ANU students and staff were joined by those from the University of Canberra, and both young and older community members were present.

One student told Woroni: ‘I’m here to understand what ANU is doing, where we’re at, and what we need to do going forward.’

Another expressed frustration at the university’s apparent lack of understanding with regards to Fossil Free ANU’s goals.

‘They don’t seem to understand that it isn’t just about the university’s emissions, this is a community issue,’ he said.

At the post-protest debrief, discussion ranged from the debate around the Adani mine, to the role of Indigenous knowledge in fighting climate change. But ultimately conversation returned to the university.

‘The university’s socially responsible investment policy can’t be socially responsible as it currently stands,’ Himmelreigh said.

‘But we’ll keep building and building until they can’t ignore us.’

NEWS

BUDGET

BREAKDOWN Text: Hugh McClure

Issue 6, Vol. 67

On Tuesday, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, unveiled a 7.5 per cent increase in university tuition fees, a reduction in the HECSHELP income repayment threshold and a close to five per cent cut in Government subsidies for university courses.

The government’s higher education policy would increase student fees by about four per cent, adding around $3,600 to the cost of a four year degree, while also lowering the income at which students have to pay back their HECS-HELP loan from $55,000 to $42,000.

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The federal government currently holds around $52 billion in student debt, a figure which is widely seen as unsustainable. It is estimated that a quarter of the debt will never be repaid. The federal government says their new measures would lower this

amount.

NO ANSWER TO HOUSING AFFORDABILITY CRISIS IN 2017 BUDGET Text: Max Koslowski

The federal government’s 2017 Budget has offered little to prevent the rise of housing prices across Australia.

UNSW Economics Professor Richard Holden wrote for The Conversation: ‘This will cost the government A$250 million over four years and do absolutely nothing to help first home owners. We have seen this movie before, with 50 years of first home owner grants in one form or another. All that happens is that this subsidy goes into the price of existing housing. Sellers benefit, buyers get no joy.’

Despite the price-to-income ratio of house prices doubling over the past 20 years, and both Sydney and Melbourne recently being named in the top five least affordable cities in Another minor policy found in the the world, only a few minor policies Budget enables people over 65 to were proposed to solve the issue. downsize, by allowing $300,000 of a sale of their main residence to go towards One policy was the ‘First Home Super their superannuation.

Saver Scheme’, which allows voluntary superannuation contributions of up to An extra $63.1 million over four years $15,000 per annum – or $30,000 if you is going towards the National Housing are a couple – to be withdrawn from Finance and Investment Corporation, your savings and used as a deposit on which aims to provide cheaper financing your first house. This will be taxed at for community housing providers.

30 per cent lower than marginal tax rates.

There has also been a strong hit-back against foreign owners of Australian Some have criticised the move, property. Foreign owners will not longer saying that it costs too much and is be exempted from capital gains tax for ineffective. their primary residences, and there will

be a tax on foreign owners who leave their properties vacant, which will ratise the government $16.3 million.

Both the Labor party and the Greens have hit back against the measures.

The leader of the Greens, Richard Di Natale, argued that this was part of a broader trend of the Coalition neglecting younger voters.

‘If you’re under the age of 35, you’ve been screwed over in this budget – whether it’s the gouging of higher education, the lack of action on climate change or the refusal to tackle housing affordability.

‘We know what we need to do to make it possible for young people to buy a home in our capital cities – get rid of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. Unfortunately, this budget proves that the Government is too beholden to its billionaire mates to do anything more than nibble around the edges.

‘These fresh tax breaks to first-home buyers and baby boomers are going

to further overheat the market and make housing less affordable, not more. The Government and the ALP need to stop taking donations that make it impossible for them to write policies that are in your interest, not the interests of wealthy developers,’ he said.

In his Budget reply speech, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, also rebuked the government’s efforts.

‘A Labor Budget would level the playing field for affordable housing, not protect tax-breaks for property investors. Mr Speaker, the government would love Australians to believe they’re doing something on housing.

‘But they’re not reforming negative gearing and capital gains – we are.

They’re not undoing the tax breaks which give every investor a headstart at every auction – we are.

They’re not serious about tackling the crisis in housing affordability – we are,’ Shorten told Parliament on Thursday.

REGIONAL STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES BIG WINNERS IN BUDGET 2017 Text: Max Koslowski

The federal government’s 2017 Budget has renewed federal focus on regional education and infrastructure development, with the treasurer, Scott Morrison, warning that some regional areas have been ‘disconnected from national growth’.

The treasurer announced $15.2 million in funding for eight regional study hubs that plan to improve university access for regional students.

which focus on aiding rural students who plan to study maths are science.

The program, titled ‘Rural and Regional Enterprise Scholarships’, aims to ‘improve educational attainment, skills development, and employment opportunities for rural and regional students’. This will amount to $20,000 for each recipient in either undergraduate, postgraduate or vocational education positions.

To complement the initiative, the 2017 Budget has placed $1.5 billion in the ‘Skilling Australians Fund’, focusing on training workers in new skills as part of its overhaul of temporary foreign worker visas.

Budget removes $2 million in funding from a student relocation scholarships program, and there is a lack of funding to resolve the ongoing mobile phone black-spot difficulty.

Regional students will also benefit from an injection of infrastructure funding. More than 120 kilometres of rail track from Toowoomba to Kagaru in South East Queensland will be built, as part of a $70 billion regional infrastructure package. This package will also include $8.4 billion for a direct rail freight route between Melbourne and Brisbane, and the long-awaited funding for Sydney’s second airport at Badgerys Creek.

In addition, the government will pledge But it isn’t all good news for regional Morrison explained, saying that it $24 million for 1,200 scholarships, students and their families: the was ‘backing the plans that regional

communities are making to take control of their own economic future’.

Further, the Budget puts $472.2 million, over four years, into the Regional Growth Fund, as well as contributing $272.2 million worth of grants for projects targeted to regions ‘undergoing structural adjustment’.

Additional funding of $200 million will go towards the existing Building Better Regions Fund, which funds projects such as sports stadiums and roads.

It’s unclear, however, whether the wealth of education and infrastructure funding from Budget 2017 is enough to sweeten the bitter taste left by the the $2.8 billion cut to university funding, and the projected 7.5 per cent increase in university fees over the coming years.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

NEWS

A BUDGET WITH NOTHING TO BE EXCITED ABOUT ANALYSIS Text: Jasper Lindell News Editor

their policies – they are seen as voters who will never be won over anyway, so why bother catering to what they think? Never mind that young people are the future.

So a fairly moderate increase to student fees is the firm policy This is a Budget which is at great pains replacement to the alarming plans not be heinously awful. And in that, it of the Abbott-era to fully deregulate succeeds. university fees and the uncertainty which followed when that faltered in In the recent past we’ve seen how a the Senate.

Liberal Budget can be a horror show of dramatic cuts, ideologically motivated Most students will be able to cope maneuvers and blatantly awful with the changes to fee increases. policies.

Decreasing the salary threshold to $42,000 to push for payback will That was then, this is now. sting. Someone earning $42,000 a year takes home about $600 a week This time around, unlike 2014, we’ve after tax, and eating into to this been given something a lot more any further by making low-income subtle. There’s more nuance here. But earners pay back their student loans it’s not all rosy and wonderful – it’s a is unfair. thinly veiled plea for political survival which puts its burden on young people. But the most troubling thing is the Malcolm Turnbull needs this Budget rhetoric the federal government uses to go well if he’s to cling on as prime to talk about higher education. minister.

‘In higher education, we are This is all fairly academic to students. launching a fairer system, with The Liberals have never been students asked to pay a bit more for concerned with what students think of their own education costs. However,

taxpayers will continue to subsidise more than half the cost of each and every student’s higher education.

‘A 2.5 per cent efficiency dividend will be applied to universities for the next two years to to ensure taxpayers and students get better value for their investments,’ the treasurer, Scott Morrison, said in his Budget speech.

What nerve.

To portray education as a financial investment, nothing more than a business decision and transaction is deeply worrying. Of course, education is an investment: in the future, in young people. But it should never be reduced to solely economic terms.

Education costs money. Its return is qualitatively more than dollars can ever record on the Budget bottom line.

Student protesters have described the proposals this week as ‘fee deregulation by stealth’. While the current model is not nearly as hideous as full fee deregulation, its motivations come from the same place: a blatant disregard for the transformative and positive power of spending on education.

There is an ideological war being waged on young people. Potential drug testing for youth allowance recipients, increases to university fees, no real action on housing affordability other than measures which economists are already musing will simply push prices further out of our reach. There is scant here, as a young person, to be excited about.

The government ought to be commended on their measures to give regional students a chance to pursue a tertiary education. But there is more to be done. Sadly this Budget lacks the long term vision that would be required to achieve it.

Once again young people are collateral in the political scheme of a government vying for survival, internally and electorally. This is a Budget more in line with the appearance of Old Malcolm Turnbull: operating from the Centre.

But if Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership has taught us anything, it’s that a politician’s appearance has no bearing on how they will actually behave.

FUNDING MODEL HANGS IN THE BALANCE Text: Hugh McClure

t he government needs to secure 10 of t he remaining 11 upper house votes to have t he changes passed.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, revealed in his Budget reply speech on Thursday night that Labor would not support the Turnbull government’s widespread reforms to the university funding model, which have been the subject of sustained criticism since the Budget was handed down on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, championed his reforms, saying that university graduates had a ‘significant advantage over other Australians in terms of their employment rates. They are notably higher than the employment rates of non-university graduates. The average lifetime income is notably higher than the average lifetime income of non-university graduates’, an argument which makes little mention of the positive effects for the broader economy of a well-educated workforce.

Labor, t he Greens and Senator Jacqui Lambie have joined toget her in block ing t he government’s proposed changes, meaning t hat

Deloitte Access Economics unveiled a repor t which revea led t hat while veterinar y science studies courses were underf unded, t he grow t h in universit y f unding was not insuf f icient over t he period 201015 to keep up w it h rising tuition costs.

Group of Eight Chief Executive Vicki Thomson said: ‘The Go8 urges the [Senate] committee to please look closely at what has occurred as we, along with the banks, are made to suffer financially, and unlike the banks, universities have no way to claw back the financial damage.’

Universities will also be required to absorb a 2.5 per cent ‘efficiency dividend’, to ref lect their share of ‘budget repair’, a claim which Universities Australia CEO Belinda Robson has rejected.

‘Enough is enough. Universities and their students have already done more than their fair share of Budget repair,’ Robson said.

Further changes announced include New Zealanders getting access to HECS-HELP Loans at Australian institutions, while $15m has been set aside to develop eight community study hubs in regional Australia, including one at Cooma, south of Canberra.

HEWSON: NO LONG TERM VISION IN BUDGET Text: Jasper Lindell

‘It’s a budget designed for scoring political points rather than solving problems,’ he said.

Former Liberal opposition leader turned ANU academic John Hewson says that the 2017 federal Budget lacks strategic thinking and long term vision. Hewson also criticised the response of the opposition leader, Bill Shorten.

‘There’s no serious policy, no narrative.

‘You could say that this Budget raises more questions than answers,’ Hewson, who is the chair of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Crawford School of Public Policy, said.

Speaking to Woroni, Professor Hewson Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald said that the focus of the Budget is on last week, Hewson said that it was a next week’s Newspoll. ‘pragmatic’ Budget.

‘No, the Budget is politically pragmatic, rather than ideological, or principled. Turnbull really doesn’t have a personal ideology that has been lurking in the background, nor a personal policy agenda. He just loves being PM, and he would like to stay there. He has no serious contenders who might realistically hope to replace him. He is still there, pretty much leader by default. So, why not chance his arm on such pragmatism, especially if it gives him some, even short-term, poll relief?’ Hewson wrote.

Hewson told Woroni that if the government was thinking strategically, it ‘would have done something on climate change.’

He argued the government needed to work to find ‘holistic, integrated’ responses to these issues.

John Hewson was the federal opposition leader and leader of the Liberal party between 1990 and 1994.

NEWS

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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SRC TO ENDORSE EQUITABLE CHANGES TO ADMISSIONS Text: Bella Di Mattina-Beven

to extracurricular activities and any disadvantage experienced.

Kay said in the SRC meeting that she was impressed by the level of focus on The Student Representative Council equity in the plan, but that there was (SRC) passed a motion last week no clear proposal set in place yet. endorsing changes to university admissions on the condition that The motion means that when a system they seek to increase equity and is proposed, the SRC will rediscuss it. diversification in the student body.

The motion also makes the changes a regular discussion point of future The motion was put forward by the College Representative Council education officer, Robyn Lewis, (CRC) meetings, with reports from and seconded by the vice-president, the movers of the motion. It was Eleanor Kay, at the SRC meeting held suggested by Kay that the motion on 10 May. would see the system pass through the Committees before discussion at The motion read: ‘The ANU Students the SRC. Association will only endorse changes to admissions, scholarships Many students at the SRC meeting and accommodation ASA if they raised concerns about the apparent are based on an overarching goal of Americanisation of the admissions increasing equity in admissions and system, with some recognising that diversification of the student body.’ such a system would still advantage the upper class. This was ref lected in The motion is ANUSA’s response to the CRC meeting which took place in the ANU’s plan to change admissions late April. requirements, and promoted widespread debates on the issues The April CRC meeting revealed associated with university admission more information on the system, and equity. which will be ‘algorithmic’ in its approach to extra-curriculars, with The current plan is for one admission students ticking a box and denoting system and form to be used for applications, the frequency of their participation. scholarships and accommodation. The form should include questions relating Kay reaffirmed at the SRC meeting

last week that part-time work and carer roles would be included in this part of the system, to ensure socio-economic disadvantage isn’t perpetuated.

Educational disadvantage and disability is also to be taken into account, but under a separate umbrella to extracurricular activities.

However students raised concerns about the ability for the ANU to support students once they arrived at the ANU. The academic Colleges have expressed concern at the ability for students with lower ATARs to succeed in more rigorous degrees. Kay linked this concern with the ability for those struggling academically to seek adequate mental health support.

‘If you put a student that doesn’t have the academic background in a degree there is significant strain on their mental health … it can be really detrimental to you as a person,’ she told the meeting.

One member of the SRC raised concerns about the financial strain of accommodation and textbooks, and the lack of support available to students.

It appears the university is already responding to such concerns, with

scholarships moving to a more needsbased approach into the future. The current system focuses on academic proficiency.

Debate continues on whether the new holistic approach will exclude highachieving students with no extracurricular engagement. Speaking against the idea at the CRC meeting was representative Felicity Brown, who argued: ‘If we shut out people who got 99, we’re blocking those people who can help find cures for disease.’

Brown suggested that those achieving over 90 be exempt from needing extra curricular requirements. Marnie Hughes-Warrington, the deputy vicechancellor (academic), indicated in February that even a student with an ATAR of 99.95 would not be accepted if they did not meet extra curricular requirements.

Ultimately, the motion was considered

by SRC members to be part of an ongoing advocacy role ANUSA plays in creating a more equitable ANU. It is part of an ongoing discussion where we are ‘holding the university to account,’ said Lewis.

JOHNS: A FRESH PERSPECTIVE Text: Aleyn Silva and Khasif Jadwat

‘There is no doubt that sexual assault is an unacceptable behaviour and we can’t tolerate it. What we then have to do is provide the victim with as much support as he or she needs to help them John College XXIII has been to deal with the situation they’ve got. recognised for its enforcement of anti-harassment policies that have ‘We’ve also got to deal with the alleged been adapted in the last few years. perpetrator in a fair and just way – but But in the light of stigmatisation if they’ve crossed the line they have to that surrounds Johns, Woroni deal with the consequences. The other interviewed the Head of Hall, Jeff thing that we do is we ask the victim Johnson. what they want and what we can do to help – this guides us in how we react in Johnson said that the College was a particular case. working to change the impression people hold of it.

The residential policy of the College outlines a commitment to integrity, ‘There is no doubt that we are trying respect and justice. to change the image of the College and I wouldn’t say that we are changing ‘The Residents have the right to a lot of things, we are just saying to express and defend ideas, opinions people – enjoy your time here, but if and make appropriate life choices. The you make mistakes assume there will College recognises that all members of be consequences. If there has been the College have the right to live, study change here in the last few years it and work in an environment free from is that there are consequences for discrimination, harassment, hazing actions,’ he said. and bullying,’ the policy reads.

Johnson highlighted the current measures to tackle harassment within the College. The College uses the Consent Matters module, and runs education seminars to further students’ knowledge of consent. ‘In the area of consent, we’re having a number of sessions at night where students come and we can talk about sexual health,’ Johnson told Woroni.

Johnson told Woroni that the college utilises ‘suspension as an educational tool’ acting as a ‘cautionary slap on the wrist.’

One first-year John XIII College resident noted: ‘They’re really trying to change the reputation we have, because it’s nothing like it used to be, so much more tame and under control now.’

John X XIII has also implemented a variety of academic facilities to allow students to fully achieve their potential, funding academic nights, tutorials and academic counsellors.

‘One of the key changes within Johns is our academic policy, We have a tier system of response in regards to academic failure – a new student would be on normal status, then they could move to at risk, then academic warning, probation, then lastly exclusion.

‘If a student has worked their way up through the stages and hasn’t taken the advice that has been given then we are excluding people from college on academic grounds’, Johnson said.

In regards to the expulsions and suspensions that occurred earlier in the year, Johnson said: ‘With the students we saw that they had crossed some lines, some had gone too far, others hadn’t gone as far, some were barely involved. Hence why we tried to be fair as possible, implementing three different penalties.

‘When we deal with our students we deal with it on a personal basis – we are not a bureaucratic organisation, we are people who set a standard. If people cross the line there will be a consequence, but that consequence will take in a lot of things.

In rega rds to u nderage d ri n k i ng, Johnson sa id: ‘Underage d ri n k i ng is not accepted, we do not i f y people who t he u nderage d ri n kers a re, t hey a re told at t he beg i nni ng of t he yea r t hat t hey a re not to d ri n k whi lst u nderage a nd t here w i l l be sig ni f ica nt consequences i f t hey do.

‘One of t he t hi ngs t hat we do here is accept t hat people ma ke mista kes, so we i nit ia l ly prov ide cou nsel li ng a nd adv ice, but i f t hat is ig nored we have to ta ke d iscipli na r y ac t ion,’ Johnson sa id.

In reference to t he prejud ice towa rd t he Col lege, Johnson sa id t hat ‘t he st ig mat isat ion agg ravates a lot of st udents when t hey encou nter it, especia l ly when t hey a re t he ones t hat a re here a nd t hey k now what people t hi n k a nd say a re especia l ly w rong.

‘Ma ny people t hi n k t hat lots of pu nish ments occu r here because t he st udents as a col lec t ive have less i nteg rit y – lots of pu nish ments occu r here, not because behav iou rs a re d i f ferent.

We’re just reac t i ng to it i n a d if ferent way. ‘ T he on ly t hi ng I’ d li ke to ask people i n rega rds to t heir percept ion of John X X III is to be fa ir, a nd not necessa ri ly believe ever y t hi ng you hea r.’

7

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

CANBERRA ICON TURNS 37 Text: Josie Ganko

Monday, 15 May marks 37 years since the opening of the Telstra Tower in 1980.

Opening in 1980, the tower would become one of Canberra’s most significant landmarks – a symbol of Canberra – particularly at the ANU where Black Mountain and the tower serve as a backdrop for much of the campus.

However iconic the tower is now though, this was not always the case.

The tower was subject to fierce criticism from Canberrans throughout its design and construction.

Ecological issues and criticisms of its design fuelled the main arguments against the tower’s construction, and the Canberra community was vocal in their opposition throughout the 1970s.

The public expressed their dissent in many letters to the editor in The Canberra Times. One concerned citizen, D. Green of Hackett, wrote in the 17 December 1973 issue of the Times that the thought of the project left him in a state of despair.

‘There is no argument of any kind in favour of this tower, except that some undisclosed powerful person (or persons) wants it. Nearly $5 million will be wasted to gratify this ambition,’ Green wrote.

Another letter submitted by a group of Canberra residents in 1972 was concerned that ‘the amenity of the area would be spoilt by the tower development, as would the rich openness of Canberra’s splendidly conceived central basin’.

Woroni published various pieces on the saga, including a detailed report in the 16 March 1973 issue on a large demonstration where conservationists and aestheticians alike gathered to protest the building of the tower.

In a letter to the editors of Woroni in the preceding issue, ANU student Mark O’Conner further expressed concern for ANU students with the proximity of Black Mountain construction zone to the Daley Road colleges – O’Conner was concerned over the potential for disruption and noise.

Disapproval even became a legal issue, when the federal government was taken to the High Court over the constitutionality of the project.

In Johnson v Kent (1975) the High Court eventually supported the government’s construction of the tower. Their judgement affirmed that the activity came within the breadth of permissible executive government activity under section 122 of the Constitution.

Despite these hurdles, the construction of the tower continued, and it was officially opened by then prime minister Malcolm Fraser on 15 May 1980 with the name Telecom Tower.

The Canberra Times reported that in its first month of operation there were over 10,000 visitors and that despite the controversy surrounding its construction the tower was largely well regarded by the public upon its completion.

Since then, the tower has continued in its operation with a constant stream of visitors. While the revolving restaurant contained in the tower closed in 2013, the tower is still host to cafes and tourist kiosks, as well as an array of telecommunications services.

In celebration of 37 years, the Telstra Tower held a carnival celebration was held on Sunday, 14 May.

NEWS

STUDENT MEDIA LOCKED OUT OF BUDGET LOCK UP Student newspapers, including Woroni, were not accredited to attend this year’s Budget lock up at Parliament House, despite having attended in previous years.

Woroni, the University of Melbourne’s Farrago and the University of Sydney’s Honi Soit were not granted access to the lock up this year, with the Treasury saying that there was not enough space available and professional media organisations would have to be prioritised.

SYN Media, a youth community radio station based in Melbourne, was also denied access. SYN has previously won a community radio award for Budget coverage.

Woroni news editor Jasper Lindell said that it was especially suspicious given the policy announcements in the lead up to the Budget that would affect young people and students.

‘It seemed pretty clear what was going on, they were trying to exclude student journalists from the conversation because it was likely that we would be critical of the higher education policy that the government had just announced,’ he said.

‘And the line that they fed us, saying that there was no space in the lock-up is utter rubbish. None of us believe that there are suddenly more journalists this year than the last few years. It was an active decision to keep us out, not circumstantial.’

An open letter published in Honi Soit and signed by student publications from campuses across the country condemned the ‘suspect’ and cynical behaviour of locking out student media.

‘It is an unsettling coincidence that university publications are being excluded in precisely the year that controversial university funding reforms are being announced,’ the editorial said.

‘This move smacks of a government unwilling to face the scrutiny of young people, a government which does not wish to engage with those who will be directly affected by their policies, and a government which believes it can avoid criticism simply by turning journalists away at the door.’

The open letter was signed by the editors of Woroni, Farrago, Honi Soit, Opus, W’SUP, Togatus and the ANU Observer.

NEWS

Issue 6, Vol. 67

8

This is where a story would have been printed that was first reported by journalists at Fairfax Media. It was never covered because they were on strike. Following the announcement that 25 per cent of their editorial staff would be cut, they walked off the job for a week in protest. When journalists lose their jobs, we are all affected. We stand in solidarity with the Fairfax reporters at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and call on Fairfax Media not to cut the number of journalists – the work of whom is more vital now than ever – at their mastheads. #fairgofairfax

GEOLOGICAL DETECTIVE WORK REVEALS EARTH’S EARLY HISTORY Text: Isabella Ostini

Geologists at the ANU have provided another clue towards unravelling the mystery of early Earth’s nature.

A team of researchers from the university’s Research School of Earth Sciences studied grains of the mineral zircon, found in the sandstone of Jack Hills, Western Australia. The Jack Hills are home to a concentration of the oldest zircon crystals in the world.

The results suggest that there was very little tectonic activity during the Hadean period of Earth’s history.

The Hadean period began with Earth’s formation, 4.6 billion years ago, and ended four billion years ago. The oldest ‘It was actually researchers here at zircon crystals found at Jack Hills are ANU who back in the 1980s who built about 4.26 billion years old. a machine specifically to analyse the age of the mineral zircon,’ Burnham No rocks have survived from the said. ‘And then the other aspect we Hadean period, so the zircon found in were building on was work done here the sandstone of Jack Hills provides vital at ANU studying the granites of the clues to what happened during this time. Lachlan Fold Belt.’

Speaking to Woroni, lead researcher Dr Antony Burnham said: ‘These Jack Hills [zircons] are really the sole fount of knowledge about the first 400 million years of earth’s history.’

The Lachlan Fold Belt is a series of granite structures stretching across southeast Australia. Burnham’s team compared the composition of zircons in the better understood granite formations from this region, to the Like analysing skin cells at a crime Jack Hills zircon. scene, geologists must engage in detective work to draw a picture of ‘We used the zircons from these rocks Earth’s earliest days from the minuscule in southeast Australia to identify a grains. fingerprint for either sediment melting or igneous rock melting,’ Burnham To extract and analyse the zircon explained. is an involved process requiring inventiveness and plenty of gadgetry. Their detective work uncovered The zircon crystals must be sifted, over striking similarities between the multiple steps, from the other elements Jack Hills zircon, and samples in the found in the sandstone samples. They Lachlan Fold Belt formed from melted are then mounted ready to examine with older igneous rock. The evidence that an electron microscope, or be vaporised there was little sediment melting with a laser so the resulting gas can be during the Hadean era suggests analysed by mass spectrometer. that early Earth did not have plate tectonics.

The study was an ANU effort, with the most recent research building on the ‘One of the main ways you get sediment efforts of previous projects. melting is you need to take sediments

from the surface of the earth down to somewhere where they get hot enough to melt, and that’s usually tectonic forces,’ Burnham said.

With so few surviving samples, discoveries such as that of Burnham and his team provide valuable lines of evidence.

First of all, they reveal more about the what Earth was like relatively soon after its formation. Without plate tectonics, the process we know today, of crust forming at mid-ocean ridges and spreading, would not have existed.

This means that processes like those that formed diamonds, would have been non-existent, or far different from today.

In fact, drawing on both these results and previous findings, it seems possible the Earth had very little by way of continents at all. Instead, smaller islands likely emerged from a sea covering most of the planet.

Tectonic plate collisions also form mountain ranges like the Himalayas and the Alps, which are important for moderating the planet’s climate.

‘When you have mountains, as they weather and erode they actually draw down large amounts of carbon dioxide

from the atmosphere,’ Burnham explained. ‘So the fact that you didn’t have that process going on back then means potentially we had much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere before there were plate tectonics.’

Apart from adding new evidence to the debate around early Earth, the findings provide a useful tool for other geologists.

Depending on various conditions, such as weather and rock type, some rocks erode much faster than others. Analysing zircon overcomes this difficulty.

‘By looking specifically at the mineral zircon we can see through this bias and try to get a more representative view of earth’s history,’ Burnham said.

There’s plenty more questions about the planet’s evolution to be answered, such as what caused plate tectonics to emerge, and why granite during the Hadean period formed differently to much of the granite now. Burnham hopes that zircon analyses can reveal the processes that allowed useful minerals such as tin, copper, gold and rare earth elements to be concentrated.

‘The great thing about doing research is that you’re always finding something new, and you don’t necessarily know what it’ll be,’ he said.

9

NEWS

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

ANU ACADEMIC RECOGNISED FOR REVIVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE Text: Bronte McHenry

ANU academic and lecturer Dr John Giacon recently received the Patji-Dawes award for his teaching of and contribution to revitalising the Indigenous Australian language Gamilaraay.

The Patji-Dawes award was established from the belief that achieving proficiency in multiple languages is one of the most important learning experiences, that this is a rarity in Australian society, and that there was not enough public recognition of those who excel beyond national mediocrity.

Gamilaraay is the traditional language spoken over a large area of north central NSW and Queensland and is closely related to Yuwaalaraay.

When Dr Giacon began working to revitalise the language in 1994, the oldest speaker struggled to recall lengthy sentences and their work began by focusing on single words.

Today, a quick search on Google allows anyone access to a Gamilaraay learner’s guide, grammar guide, dictionary, picture dictionary and song books. There are also comprehensive resource books for teachers.

These resources are essential in enabling teachers around the country to pass on Gamilaraay to the next generation of students – both Indigenous and nonIndigenous.

Students at the ANU who are enrolled in AUST1001 – Learning an Indigenous Language – also learn Gamilaraay, and have been contributing to the online stockpile of resources. The final assessment in the course, worth 10 per cent, is to develop a resource that future students can use.

Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language at ANU, Professor Nick Evans, has said

that working with Gamilaraay people has been one of the most rewarding experiences of Giacon’s career.

‘He gradually came to realise how much growing back the language is part of healing the terrible wounds of the past.

‘Whenever possible he has tried to do this by employing old recordings to let the voices of elders now departed be heard in the classroom’, Evans said.

The Gamilaraay language has been taught at ANU since 2013 and is currently offered every semester.

THE BEAUTIFUL TRUTH: AN INTERVIEW WITH FABSOC’S PRESIDENT Text: Aleyn Silva

It would be easy to think that the Fashion and Beauty Society, FABSOC for short, would risk perpetuating social concerns in regards to the definition of beauty.

An interview with Fernando Goh, the society’s president, however, allowed a glimpse into a group that boasts a diverse range of members, and which aims to create an inclusive environment for any individual intrigued by fashion and beauty styles and techniques.

Goh told Woroni that he had a vision for the society ‘to be big and impactful’. Goh said the society sought to reinforce the need for diversity in fashion and interpretations of beauty.

Millennial Watches and Miss Kadia. ‘A lot of our members have a serious passion with the business surrounding fashion or beauty skills: makeup, hair styling etc. We try and encourage that. We have so many members who have cultivated passions in this group and used it to create a future for themselves.’

Goh said the premise of the society is to provide creative freedom which allows an individual to ‘refine the skills, because we are definitely not talking about refining the person.’

Goh reflected upon his own personal context and the impact the society had upon his wellbeing and development.

‘Growing up was hard in the sense that I grew up in a white heteronormative school. I used to be bullied for how I looked and for being Asian. Where I grew up everyone stereotyped me because the way I act is rather flamboyant and expressive. People would call me gay and I didn’t even know I was gay at the time.

‘For me, when I think someone is beautiful I don’t just see it in a physical way.

Beauty isn’t just physical, it’s ideals.

Within the FABSOC culture I want to cultivate the culture to see the beauty in everyone,’ Goh said, highlighting the subjective nature of beauty.

‘I grew up in many places because my family used to travel a lot. I grew up in a In response to stigmatisation that may rural town and it was hard – if and when occur due to misconstruing that FAB- you didn’t conform people identified it SOC is a society for specifically beautiful easily. Coming into uni I was trying to people, Goh responded by recalling his find my place, and FABSOC was one of own personal assumptions in regards to the first few places I felt fully comfortable the society. ‘When I initially heard about being in,’ Goh said. it, the name alone makes you assume things. I had certain ideas about what ’When I came into ANU I was gay, Asian FABSOC was – I imagined a setting like and I didn’t conform to Western beauty Mean Girls or Scream Queens.’ standards. Hence, as president I attempt to create a diverse environment. We Goh explained that ‘beauty’ as men- don’t want a toxic environment. I want tioned within the society title ‘is not the new members to feel the same way I did physical form of the person.’ Instead, when I joined: comfortable and acceptGoh explains that by beauty the society ed,’ Goh said. is referring to beauty techniques. ‘Beauty products not the beauty of the person,’ Goh went on to explain how the inclusive Goh said. society was created: ‘Right at the beginning of our constitution it states that our The society also attempts to cultivate the society is inclusive. It doesn’t discrimitalents of students, allowing students nate on anyone based in gender, sexual to collaborate with businesses such as orientation, sex or race.

In addition to this, ‘A fashion society should involve everyone despite them all having different fashion styles,’ Goh said.

Speaking of aspirations for the society, Goh explained the aim of the society was to ‘make sure that we aren’t mainstream.

This year we have a lot of members who incorporate their own completely different fashion styles. We should always have diversity.

‘Beauty and fashion are subjective concepts, it’s different for different cultures, circles et cetera. I think restricting to one sort of style or one point of view is unfair.

‘We have such different ideas of what we find beautiful and embrace it and try and incorporate it into all our events,’ Goh said.

Goh constantly reinforced the need for a society which allowed diversity and inclusivity, although Goh considered the possibility of bullying and aggression which hypothetically could have the capacity to occur in a society centred around concepts of beauty.

‘To be honest within our society there hasn’t been any bullying at the moment, although if it did occur we would handle it immediately.

‘FABSOC is a culture of inclusion, a space where people can express themselves and be creative without judgement,’ Goh said.

On joining FABSCO, Goh said: ‘There are no requirements [for joining], so many of our members have such different styles! I encourage people to overdress, underdress and that is what I love that about FABSOC. Everyone looks amazing as they are. You don’t have to be “fashionable” or “beautiful” to join.

Everyone is beautiful. But join because you’re passionate.’

Got a news tip?

Email news@ woroni. com.au

Issue 6, Vol. 67

COmment

10

‘Dear Union Court’ Natalie Ziegler Moving 16,000 kilometers away, even for just five months, is scarier in reality than imagination – a lesson I learned fast as an exchange student at ANU this past semester. To cope with initial homesickness and anxiety about adjustment, I decided to ground myself in something familiar – to find a spot on campus that could be a place of refuge and solace.

Within two weeks, I found The Gods Cafe in all its glory. And, ever since, I’ve been frequenting it for its flat whites, relaxed aesthetic, diverse and well-curated playlists, and ideal studying atmosphere.

Gods, and it’s genuinely kind staff, who themselves have become familiar and reassuring fixtures of my semester, has been integral to my short time at the ANU – so I can’t even imagine the indelible impact it’s left on countless students across the generations. It’s enabled me to deepen friendships over afternoons spent studying (read: eating chips and chatting), to find a moment of peace during times of stress, and to gradually settle into life at the ANU. When I remember my exchange semester, The Gods will stand at the forefront.

But it won’t just be pleasant nostalgia, it’ll be a sense of loss. As the Union Court redevelopment thrusts Gods’ fate into an uncertain balance, I can’t help but feel sad for the alumni who frequented Gods in their time, and the current students who find Gods an oasis like myself and will feel lost without it.

More so, I feel sad any future students of ANU who, like me, will looking to find a home as they navigate the first months of campus life.

Emily Dickey Patrick Haesler As an ANU student of only three months, I don’t have an abundance of Union Court memories to draw on. In my short time, however, I have played my first game of pool, recorded a timelapse for a music video, and blown plenty of dollars on textbooks and hot chips. I have signed the pavement in German, and I have stumbled drunkenly back to Bruce Hall after a night out. I do, however, have one rather unique story. On only the third day of O-Week, I had just finished a blind coffee date at Gods and started to feel a massive migraine coming on. I ended up passing out on a couch in the Griffin Hall common room, unable to move and barely able to talk. A kind stranger called some paramedics, who almost took me to a hospital. But, as they were pulling me out on a stretcher I started to feel like all I needed was a good sleep. I was put into a quiet space, slept for an hour and then drove home.

I’m not sure if this is everyone’s first experience after drinking their first coffee at Gods, but it was mine.

Oh, Union Court! I remember chatting up a boy in Tasmania (of all places?), and he made fun of you for your ‘soviet brutalist architecture’ and, well, let’s just say that was the end of him.

Zoe O’Leary Cameron I still remember the ridiculous nerves as I waited for my first NUTS audition at the ANUSA offices in February 2013: my first year. A few days later, I got an email from the directors congratulating me on getting the part. New nerves began to set in – those related to being in my first ‘serious university production’. Four years on, I look back mostly fondly on my memories in Union Court, particularly the Arts Centre. I’ll always remember those successful and unsuccessful auditions, the stressful performances and the transcendental ones, too. Working with ridiculously inspiring people, two times at the directing rodeo, beautiful friendships, cathartic rants, wild after parties, tears, and the occasional blood.

And, of course, the strangely reassuring knowledge that even members of ‘serious university productions’ are, for the most part, all just as nervous as you are, just doing their best, and working it out as they go.

Union Court, where do I start? From your minimalist amphitheatre vibe, which has projected many a secret that I was telling in confidence, to your steps that I’ve tripped up running late to a tute one too many times.

Union Court: the hub of running into people that you’ve been avoiding since you last ran into them, and realising that, yes, you still have no energy to carry such a conversation. Union Court: the meeting place for many a date and many a failed romantic break up.

I’ve lain on your sweet grass in summer, sweating out O-Week, and cried on your cold grass in winter as the leaves fell around me.

The perfect spot to suggest stopping by when attempting to extend the time after your lecture, before you have to say goodbye to the cutie who sits next to you.

Union Court, even though I briefly thought you were ugly, you shall be dearly missed. From drunkenly stumbling through at 4am to rushing by your deserted walkways at 7.45am to catch the Sydney bus, from your glaring blinding sunlight to your sad overcast gloom, we will miss you.

I only pray for the first years who will never know your welcoming cement.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

11

Nadia Kim

Tooba Faridi Poppy Perry

‘Thursday,’ a haiku.

Dear Union Court,

Sausages in the sun Long lines wind through Union Court Will all be no more

I will be sad to see you leave – you’re ugly but in a pretty way. I’m sorry I can’t reassure you that when you’re gone you will be returned to the earth that you came from. And this keeps both of us awake at night.

They are chopping down trees in preparation for your departure. The diggers and the drills and the concrete mixers are burning petroleum, releasing its carbon into the atmosphere just so that we can have something prettier than you. Something more modern. It seems that we always want something better, doesn’t it? You’d know, you’ve seen a lot in your time, I guess.

Where will they put your concrete? It doesn’t compost. What will they do with the insulation in your ceilings and walls? That’s bad for our lungs. Your glass is sharp, your wood is clogged with chemicals, and there’s so much plastic inside you, like the tummy of a coastal albatross. What will happen to the trees living on your skin? I know that you’ve nurtured them so carefully for decades; you’ve done a good job, but they will never live to bear hollows and provide a home to some of our already dwindling native birds and animals.

Why am I asking you all this when it is not your fault? It’s not your fault that there is no current Environmental Management Plan to oversee your removal and ensure that it harms our planet as little as possible. If you were prettier, or if they listened to us, then our sleepless nights would be over. But no, it seems that it would be too much effort to redevelop you with an environmental conscience. Hush, it’s not your fault. I hope all of your parts have a pleasant time sitting in a landfill for the next million years.

Best wishes, Poppy.

Anonymous Purple Day Dear Union Court,

Anya Bonan Dear Union Court, I think seeing you go will be bittersweet.

You were there for me in my first few years of university, and soon everything will change. You’ll look different, and new, and I’m not sure I’ll like that.

Change is hard to deal with, I guess.

I’ll miss the steps of your amphitheatre where I’ve taken part in so many weirdly suspicious textbook exchanges.

I’ll miss your dimly lit path that leads me to and from the place that stole any inhibitions in first year O-Week and never quite gave them back: Mooseheads. I always admired your hospitality too, welcoming guests such as the effervescent Mongolian Yurt, the O-Week pianos, the occasional lounge suites, as well as hosting some ... unwelcome guests: possums, foxes, cats, and the urine.

I’m sorry people didn’t give you the respect you deserved at 3am on Friday mornings. I’ll miss your random but organised chaos: cyclists endangering pedestrians, the clothing, the plant and book markets, and even the petitions.

I’m dragging this out a little, aren’t I? I guess I hate goodbyes. We’ve shared so many memories, but this time, it’s actually not me, it’s you. Laters baby.

Love, Anya

Comment

I was heartbroken to hear of your imminent reduction to rubble and high vis.

While I enjoy damaging the ANU institutions that call you home as much as the next Chancellory, I was disheartened to hear that it would only affect two to three years worth of students, and their course fees would only buy you a measly 25m swimming pool.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, and though your pages may be a bit worn and discoloured, written in them was memories, relationships and university institutions many of us will miss.

With your good friend Manning Clarke Centre leaving along with yourself, I imagine we’ll be doing a lot more reading, and I’m afraid that, behind your new neatly presented cover that will be used to attract so many new students, there’ll be little of the substance we’ll remember you for.

Signed, Disaffected fifth year

Comment

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Lest We Forget: The Frontier Wars Text and Photography: Anthony Merlino Warrandyte, Melbourne. A stone war memorial rests amongst native flora. On the eve of Anzac Day, 2017, residents discovered that the shrine had been defaced with one explicit message: ‘war is hell’.

The graffiti was a protest. It attempted to subvert the prevailing notion that Australia’s national identity was born through a display of sacrifice, heroism and mateship on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915.

At an institutional level, recent debates surrounding the place of the Frontier Wars in Australian military history have prompted the Australian War Memorial (AWM) to shift its interpretative remit.

In this case, grassroots movements have largely orchestrated the renegotiation.

On Anzac Day, this year, protesters from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy attempted to recast the traditional narrative with a more nuanced understanding of a past that began long before 1915. Observing the interaction between these two competing narratives is one prism through which to comprehend the changing nature of Anzac commemoration in contemporary Australia.

On Australia Day 2017, the Indigenous Australian hip-hop duo A.B Original saw their politically charged anthem ‘January 26’ ascend to number 16 on the Triple J Hottest 100 chart. The song’s success, on the very day it protested, revealed how contentious debates over the Frontier Wars have risen to prominence within public discourse. In recent times, Australian historians have frequently described the relations between colonial settlers and Indigenous nations as a state of war. Many of these historians have called upon the AWM to recognise the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who died defending their lands against colonial invasion between 1788 and 1928. Media outlets, too, have increasingly urged the AWM to formally recognise the Frontier Wars by way of a permanent gallery.

Within the colonial galleries of the AWM, frontier conflict receives a cursory overview. Most recently, the Memorial has opened the temporary exhibition, For Country, For Nation. As described by the AWM, this exhibition seeks to portray the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experience’ during ‘wartime and peace’. Notably, the Frontier Wars are frequently and overtly referenced throughout the exhibition. Permanently positioned outside this exhibition is Rover Thomas’ painting, Ruby Plains Massacre 1. In this painting, Thomas depicts the aftermath of an Aboriginal massacre perpetrated by a station-owner in the Kimberleys, Western Australia.

These installations directly acknowledge frontier conflict.

When asked in a personal email, Dr Brendan Nelson, the director of the AWM, stated that the acquisition of Rover Thomas’ painting is to directly

recognise the ‘Aboriginal perspective of colonial violence and dispossession’ that occurred during the Frontier Wars. Interestingly, this particular focus has only been recently adopted. In fact, when questioned on the inclusion of the Frontier Wars, in 2013, Nelson stated that ‘the Australian War Memorial is not in my very strong view the institution to tell that story’. It seems that the AWM’s interpretative approach is caught between two competing historical narratives – the progressive perspective of frontier conflict and the existing narrative.

Information from memorial staff sheds light on this tension. When asked in person, Chris Wagner, head of marketing and communications at the AWM, admitted that the identity of the institution is in a ‘transitioning phase’ amongst a changing political and military landscape. In Wagner’s eyes, the Memorial recognises frontier conflict only insofar as it provides the ‘social context’ for Indigenous servicepeople ‘who continued

particular shift suggests that reformist voices are remoulding the institutional narrative by wedging progressive ideas into conservative frameworks. It might equally indicate that conservative forces are resisting a total redefinition of the Anzac narrative. *** Saul Alinsky’s renowned handbook Rules for Radicals declares that ‘no politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough’. On Anzac Day 2017, a grassroots protest channelled Alinsky’s advice by attempting to recast the conventional Anzac narrative in the terms of a deeper past. For the first time, Indigenous servicepeople lead the official marches. As this occurred, however, counter-marchers from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy unofficially conjoined themselves to the formal commemorations.

Smoke erupts from a simmering campfire at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

Before the march embarked, a group of protestors, huddled around this fire, engage in vigorous political debate. From the discussion, I became aware that each individual viewed Anzac commemoration through a unique lens.

One hour later, as the march commenced amidst the patter of rain on

to sign up and fight within living memory of this tragic and awful time when massacres occurred’. Outside of providing this context, Wagner is ‘unsure’ if the AWM is suited to ‘tell the important story’ of the Frontier Wars.

These novel interpretative gestures illuminate the changing nature of Anzac commemoration. For one, it demonstrates that contentious cultural issues, which directly impact the fabric of national identity, are an impetus for a reinvention of the Anzac narrative. In 1979, historian Geoffrey Reynolds suggested in an internal report that the AWM would need to formally recognise the Frontier Wars within 10 years. Nearly 40 years on, the current state of affairs highlights a delay between the emergence of cultural contentions and a shift in interpretative practices. This suggests the current shift is not iconoclastic. In this respect, the AWM may be shackled to conservative roots and thus particularly resistant to change.

Of course, conservative commemorative influences are not insurmountable obstacles to formal recognition of the Frontier Wars. Despite being contained within the traditional narrative, these interpretative gestures directly allude to limitations with the conventional Anzac narrative. By operating on the border of critique and reverence, the institution is attempting to forge a new interpretation of the Anzac narrative that operates outside the purview of contentious issues yet can be understood in traditional terms. This attempts to avoid contentions altogether. Arguably, this

Anzac Parade, these individual perspectives were welded into a united entity.

The unity was solidified by an imposing banner that proclaimed the overarching message of the protest – ‘Lest We Forget: The Frontier Wars’. The physical formation of the group was further cemented by seven long banners which collectively listed every known massacre committed against Indigenous Australians during the Frontier Wars. Three wreaths, carried at the front of the formation, paid direct homage to Indigenous people slain in defence of their land. *** Liaising with police whilst coordinating the march stands the eminent Aboriginal leader, Michael Ghillar Anderson, who envisaged and organised the first counter-march five years ago. From his perspective, the protest sought to initiate change by drawing attention to the ‘killings perpetrated by colonial settlers’.

When questioned, Anderson noted that the Memorial is circumspectly incorporating frontier conflict into its interpretative practices because ‘there are serious legal and political implications that flow from recognising what really happened in this country’. Still, he believes

that interpretative shifts within the institutional narrative can be augmented by grassroots movements.

Rather than entirely subverting the dominant interpretation, the protesters sought to realign the trajectory of contemporary commemorative culture by redefining the Anzac narrative. To achieve this, the protesters followed the last group of official marchers headed towards the AWM. They passed spectators who had gathered to recognise the overseas service of military servicepeople.

Consequently, the list of massacres was conspicuously injected into the formal realm of official Anzac commemoration.

Some spectators clapped in veneration.

Others looked upon silently. Regardless, every spectator was made cognisant of the competing Anzac narrative. No protestor spoke a word. Looking around, I saw each individual was caught in a moment of reflection. The ambience of the protest was as solemn as the official commemorations.

Upon reaching the summit of Anzac Parade, the marchers were obstructed by a blockade of police. They were denied entry into the pantheon of national heroes. As the formal proceedings continued, the protestors from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy peacefully stood at the border dividing the institutional and grassroots narratives. When the Anzac Day ceremonies concluded, the general public were invited to lay wreaths. On behalf of the counter-marchers, Michael Anderson, amongst others, placed the memories of fallen Indigenous peoples onto the shrine outside the AWM. In this small and powerful gesture, the recognition of frontier conflict had pierced institutional barriers and breached an intensely public space.

The interaction between the two competing narratives demonstrates that grassroots movements can apply external pressure to the institutional narrative. Still, the AWM holds the principal power to enact shifts in Anzac commemoration. In this way, grassroots forces remain vital in setting the terms in which institutional interpretation is contained. At some point, the incremental achievements of grassroots protests will culminate, and subsequently prompt, a watershed moment that will realign the trajectory of the institutional narrative. Only then will the Memorial provide the recognition of the Frontier Wars that is so profoundly overdue.

I am indebted to the ANU School of History for the continuing support and intellectual inspiration.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Comment

A Brief Eulogy to ANU Bar Text: Kirsty Dale

How many venues have you been to that are a functioning food court by day and an awesome live music venue by night?

How many times do you get to see the neon Subway sign while you are losing your mind to the latest band to roll through your university? These have been lived experiences for most ANU students, however, soon they will be just memories.

This year, on 17 June, we will say goodbye to a place that has been in the hearts of ANU students and Canberra locals for over 30 years.

It’s not only the live music scene that is going to suffer. The ANU Bar is iconic for more than that. I mean, sure, Nirvana played there in 1992 and that would’ve been totally amazing if you got to go.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure most of

the current undergraduate population would have hardly been more than mere DNA when they took to the stage.

ANU Bar is irreplaceable for more things than the music.

Thinking back to first year, one of the first things you get told about when you arrive at ANU is the famous ANU Bar and the cheap jugs. Happy Hour everyday from 4pm - 6pm is revolutionary to say the least, and it’s at that point when you realise that university is going to be very different from school, but in the best way possible.

Some of my fondest memories at uni have been sitting in the beer garden, either in the sun or the freezing cold – I swear it’s one or the other – with half the crowd wearing puffy jackets, while I try my darndest to get a second jug before Happy Hour ends.

I think we can safely say the best nights and the greatest friendships begin at ANU Bar. One such great mate is Phil.

If you don’t know who Phil is that’s your loss – and do you even go to the bar?

That knowing look he gives you as you tell him you’ll just get one cup for your jug. His eyes say: ‘Might as well get a straw hey?’ And, yes, that has been done before.

One beer always makes me want to have a second beer, and then I really fall off the study wagon. Luckily for me, ANU Bar also provided us with much-needed excuses to day drink, at least twice a year in the form of their St Patty’s Day and Oktoberfest events.

The Bar is more than a place to get tipsy (read: trashed) with your best mates.

It’s a social hub. ANU Bar is a meeting place for a multitude of clubs and societies. Let’s all admit to each other that the majority of the student population has written their name on the attendance sheet for the ANU Union just to get a free drink. There are language conversation groups, people (law kids) drowning their post-exam sorrows and others just looking for a picturesque place to eat lunch without needing to spend money.

ANU Bar has been an iconic maker of memories for generations of students. It might have been a bit rough around the edges, but that is one of the reasons we loved it so much. It really has been the perfect place for students of all walks of life. What could be better bonding than rocking out to cool music at budget prices, sharing a jug, trivia or a schnitty from Uni Corner?

I hear that people also study at ANU Bar. If you get there earlier in the day, you get to have your beer in a glass schooner instead of a plastic cup. It just tastes so much better. I, unfortunately, have never really mastered the one beer thing.

Unfortunately, this incredible place will soon be no more. We’ll be sad to see you go. We love you ANU Bar.

When anu gains from climate change, we all lose Text: Bella Himmelreich

which we are currently experiencing. It is the same degree of difference between the last Ice Age and the Holocene period, which we have been in for 11,700 years – until now, that is.

The chairman of Santos, an oil and fracking company, recently said that their business works within a warming model of four degrees Celsius. Despite internationally agreed efforts to stop at two degrees, and despite the alarming effects we are seeing already, Santos will continue to profit from producing fossil fuels until the world is four degrees hotter.

Emeritus professor at the ANU, Will Steffen, said at four degrees ‘you’d be locking in tens of metres of rising sea levels, and you can say goodbye to world cities.’ Entire Pacific islands would disappear, and people would be displaced in the hundreds of millions, in a refugee crisis that no one is equipped to handle.

Bella Himmelreich is a member of Fossil Free ANU.

For the average person, this announcement from Santos is kind of unbelievable. But we, as ANU students, have a particular interest in this news because our university currently invests in Santos. And for me, someone who is slogging away at the Fossil Free ANU campaign to get full divestment from fossil fuels, this news about Santos hurts – a lot.

In 2014, ANU divested from seven fossil fuel companies, including Santos, on ethical grounds. In mid-2015, ANU outsourced the management of their investment holding to a third party and reinvested in Santos without disclosing it. Without telling students or staff for over a year, they reinvested in a four-degrees-Celsius future.

What does the world look like at four degrees?

The world at that temperature is a drastically different climate system to the one

This is a scary dystopian future that will become a reality by 2100 if we don’t act.

Even saying ‘four degrees’ is misleading because the impacts locally are actually much larger. For the Arctic and western and southern Africa, forecasts for warming are closer to ten degrees.

This environmental change would also trigger drastic social change, from food insecurity to health epidemics and political instability.

It is double the ‘safe’ limit agreed to internationally at the COP21 Paris talks in 2016, which drew criticism for not being strict enough.

And for Santos, this is business as usual.

So why aren’t we up in arms about it?

Maybe it’s because speaking about climate change in terms of degrees is fairly opaque. Maybe it’s because we’re not actually surprised that a company with the highest disregard for the environment would make such a statement.

Personally, I think it’s probably because ‘climate change’ is such a huge concept, we struggle to think about it without wanting to implode. But the reality is that a four-degree rise absolutely changes everything, and it’s hard to know where to even begin if we want to tackle it.

Often people’s response to a worsening climate emergency is to impose stricter limits on themselves – recycle, plant trees, participate in Earth Hour. These kinds of suggestions, though well intentioned, often do more harm than good.

They position climate change as solely an environmental issue, without considering the huge social and political upheaval it causes.

It also puts the blame on individuals, rather than the system, for causing climate change. But, the fact is it’s structural problems causing this rapidly changing climate, and the best way to tackle it is to take the fight to companies like Santos, to act as a collective rather than as individuals and to demand climate justice.

Fossil fuel companies like Santos have been given a social licence to act without consequence. They received $27 billion in subsidies in the 2017 budget. Universities, city councils and businesses invest in them and profit from their actions. To take them on, we have to be willing to face up to the fact that climate change is fundamentally an issue of power.

Santos is getting away with this because institutions that have the power to condemn them are not being made

accountable. Universities remain complicit in their silence, and refusing to divest makes these fossil fuel companies even more powerful.

What can we do about it?

At ANU, we’re taking a stand. We are an institution that delivers essential climate research, that educates young people and that wants to be a leader in Australia’s moral debates.

All of this is undermined by ANU’s investment in fossil fuels and is threatened further by ANU’s underhanded reinvestment in Santos. We’re already coasting on borrowed time. We need to show our VC and council members that students and staff at this university no longer accept the continued support of an industry whose operations are killing our reef, and committing us to a future of extreme weather events and insecurity.

Now, more than ever, we need to mobilise. What you can do to tell ANU and Santos that you care about the state of the world is to act locally, act collectively and act fast.

So join us. Join Fossil Free ANU, the ANU Environment Collective, AYCC (Australian Youth Climate Coalition, ASEN (Australian Student Environment Network). Join any (or all) of them.

Bring your time and your skills and tell ANU we’re not going to stand for this.

Comment

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Immigration Changes: Necessary or Xenophobic?

Text: Varun Bajekal

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s recent announcement of several changes to the 457 visa scheme and the pathway to citizenship has sparked debate around the country. The Government claims that the proposed changes promote jobs for Australians and ensure that people who want to become citizens are fully integrated into Australian society before they have the privilege of being an Australian. At the same time, some people also consider this as unfair policy that is fueled by a rise in xenophobia. Has a lot really changed, or has there been an overreaction in the media to spruik reactions and sell news?

The first change saw the government scrap the 457 visa and replace it with two additional visas. For those people who are not familiar with the 457 visa, it is a temporary work permit provided to

foreigners who are sponsored by an Australian employer to come to Australia.

The 457 visa is valid for four years, and under the previous conditions, holders could apply for permanent residence after two years.

The two new visas that will replace the 457 visa will vary in length. The first one will be valid for two years, and anyone with an occupation on the Short-term Skilled Occupation List (STSOL) can qualify. The second is valid for four years, and anyone with an occupation on the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List (MLTSSL) can qualify. Both of these occupation lists have been culled massively, with around 200 occupations being cut. These lists are also used for determining eligibility to apply for permanent residence visas.

Obviously, many people will be affected by these changes, and workers on 457 visas who dreamed of becoming Australian citizens will have to look at other options. However harsh these changes are on immigrants, they are necessary.

Several occupations previously on the skill lists should not have required foreign workers. A variety of unskilled jobs, such as blacksmiths, should go to Australians as it does not take a lot of time, money and resources to train people for low-skilled jobs. The

current unemployment rate in Australia is around 5.8 per cent, so it makes no sense to bring in people from overseas to do these low-skilled jobs.

Many people believe that the culling of the skilled occupation lists has not been sufficient, however, and that it would be in the best interest of the country to slash even more occupations. For example, at a time when law graduates are struggling to find jobs after university due to market oversaturation, barristers and lawyers are still on the MLTSSL and STSOL. This means that international students in law can apply for permanent residence shortly after graduating.

It is obvious that certain skills necessary for the country need to be imported, otherwise economic growth would take a hit. IT professionals, doctors and certain types of engineers from overseas keep these industries alive and booming.

It is in the best interest of the country to let people in occupations that are experiencing genuine shortages of domestic labour become permanent residents, but that should be the extent of it.

The other significant changes to the new immigration laws are the requirements for foreigners to become Australian citizens. Previously, an applicant had to live in Australia legally for four years, holding permanent residency for at least one of these years. The new amendments mean that foreigners will have to be permanent residents for four years before they will be eligible to apply for citizenship.

Migrants will also have to demonstrate integration within Australian society.

The new citizenship test will ask migrants about their values to make sure they align with Australian values. They will also be obliged to sit a separate

English test to ensure they have sufficient English language skills thrive in the Australian community.

Most of these changes are reasonable enough. It is the duty of migrants to integrate properly into society if they want to live and work in a foreign country, let alone become a citizen of the country.

These changes will encourage migrants integrate into society better before they have the privilege of becoming Australian citizens.

However, the English test requirement seems somewhat redundant in some situations. Migrants on skilled permanent visas already had to take English language tests (such as the IELTS or TOEFL), and meet the stringent score requirements on the test in order to be eligible to apply for their permanent visas. Therefore, it seems unnecessary to subject them to another English test after they have already displayed competent English language skills.

Migrants on permanent humanitarian visas, however, should be subject to an English proficiency test. When refugees are granted permanent protection visas, they are not required to take an English test. If they want to become Australian citizens, they must be made to prove that their English language skills are good enough to allow them to be contributing members of the Australian community.

This is obviously a sensitive debate.

Many people see the changes to Australia’s immigration policies as necessary in order to put Australians first, while others see it as a xenophobic ploy to win back supporters from far-right parties like One Nation. It is true that many aspiring Australian citizens will be affected, with many no longer being able to even qualify for a visa to work in the country. However, the Government’s duty is to serve its own people first, and if that means stricter immigration policies, the government has every right to do so. Overall, these changes will be of benefit to Australia, because they will ensure that new Australian citizens respect and practice Australian values, and are better integrated into society.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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Comment

The Philosopher’s Stoned

Stifled Voices: Women in Philosophy Through the Eyes of Fiona Jenkins Text: Anthony Merlino In this regular column, Anthony Merlino seeks to capture the unique perspective of a different ANU philosopher each fortnight. In doing so, the column will act as a bridge between the School of Philosophy and the ANU student body.

France. November 1949. Bookshelves are filled with copies of Simone de Beauvoir’s renowned, yet provocative, treatise: The Second Sex. In many ways, the release of this text represents a landmark moment in feminist history. Beneath the ripple effects, however, lie more imperceptible currents of inequality. These tides still guide contemporary philosophy. Associate Professor Fiona Jenkins attempts to chart the interactions between these underlying currents in her current philosophical endeavours.

A report released by the Australasian Association of Philosophy in 2008 – Improving the Participation of Women in the Philosophy Profession – revealed the surface manifestation of many undercurrents that pervade philosophy. The report highlighted that women constitute over 50 per cent of the enrolments in first year philosophy courses. However, women at that time represented less than 10 per cent of professorial appointments. This anomaly was ‘a revelation’ for Jenkins. She realised that there can be a large gap between the lived experiences of women and their understanding of sexism. For example, when Jenkins was undertaking doctoral research at the University of Oxford, she did not view her experiences through the lens of gender. Looking back, she realises that ‘very sexist things were going on.’ Ultimately, the report shed light on various substructures underpinning philosophy.

After finishing her PhD, Jenkins held a teaching job at the University of Essex.

She then accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Sydney. Following this, she moved to the Australian National University. During this journey, Jenkins became aware of the drastically unequal representation of women in philosophy departments. For Jenkins, the report united these experiences under one banner. A philosophical conundrum emerged from this realisation:

Why do other humanities disciplines have a more equitable representation of women? In this way, the report was an impetus for Jenkins to begin investigating the underlying currents of sexism in philosophy.

*** It is 2008. Internationally renowned philosopher Sally Haslanger pens an article from her office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this piece – Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy-Not by Reason (Alone) – Haslanger asserts her indignation towards the contemporary landscape of philosophy: ‘There is a deep well of rage inside me … [rage] about the conditions that I’m sure affect many women and minorities in philosophy’. Five years later, Jenkins channelled this sense of outrage whilst co-editing the book, Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?

When curating this text, Jenkins assembled prominent voices in the field. As a result, the text presents state-of-the-art arguments that collectively capture a wide range of feminist philosophical issues.

Most pointedly, the book confirms that the underrepresentation of women in philosophy is an undisputed statistical reality. The book incorporates data from nearly every Anglophone country with major philosophy departments. Above all, the findings demonstrate that women are underrepresented in philosophy on an international level. Interestingly, gender representation in philosophy has been extensively documented for several decades. As such, it has been clear ‘for a long time’ that philosophy underrepresents women. Still, change remains ‘very slow’. Reform occurs as progressive ideas, on the surface, slowly infiltrate the conventional structures resting beneath them.

*** The renowned author, George Eliot, expressed philosophically charged musings about the status of women in her celebrated novel, Middlemarch. In a similar fashion, Jenkins identifies that the guiding forces of philosophy are intertwined with cultural, social and political spheres. In particular, class dynamics and racial factors compound underrepresentation. Still, these structures

are also maintained through a self-legitimising academic culture. As Jenkins observes, philosophers are ‘surprisingly uncritical’ of the methods used to form judgments in disciplinary spaces. In her research, she examines how philosophical practices become cemented as ‘mainstream’. From this point, she seeks to propagate new understandings of women in philosophical contexts. As part of this, Jenkins targets one underlying structure – the ‘legitimating fictions’ used to justify inequitable situations.

One of the fictions currently targeted

by Jenkins is ‘meritocracy’. To do this, she has been conducting ethnographic research from Michele Lamont’s peer review of grant applications. Through this, Jenkins highlights disparities on research boards between the empirical understanding of how decisions are reached and an idealised understanding of the deliberative process. One of Lamont’s interesting findings is how widely criteria of ‘excellence’ differ between people of diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This complicates the idea that there are rationally vindicable criteria for establishing rankings of research projects. Similar arguments can be applied to intra-disciplinary differences across sub-fields of philosophy. Ultimately, this can be used to question the ‘meritocratic’ rationales of a wide range of selection processes within the philosophical domain.

Evidently, women in philosophy face insidious barriers as a concomitant of these legitimating fictions. Jenkins contends that obvious sexist assumptions and practices in philosophy can be directly confronted. However, elusive barriers are more difficult to target. Some of these barriers include academic assumptions about ‘the real value of the discipline’.

For example, the School of Philosophy ‘has a very high ranking for excellence as well as having been an overwhelmingly male-dominated department for a long time’. This has shaped the work that ‘is seen as the School’s brand on the world stage’. This gives a gendered basis to decision-making in a context where the research areas of men and women tend to be different. As a result, the masculine lineage remains strong even as women start to be hired into these areas. Philosophy is not alone in this respect. Jenkins’ current collaborative research project, Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences, finds similar issues in disciplines such as political science and economics, where a powerful ‘malestream’ defines excellence.

*** When attempting to foster a more inclusive environment in philosophy, Jenkins believes that academic departments need different approaches to engage women from varying backgrounds. Academic leaders should consider multiple dimensions of identity ‘as far as they can’. One example is the construction of a diverse curriculum. Next semester, Jenkins will teach a course titled What is Humanity?

In this course she hopes to engage with feminist discussions on how humanity has equated with maleness, the distinction between humans and animals, as well as racist discourses of humanity. In Jenkins view, disciplinary spaces need to account for diverse manifestations of identity. Incorporating these considerations is challenging. Therefore, educators may need to employ an overarching group of methods that can filter into the categories delineating women.

*** Evidently, the underlying currents that guide philosophy uniquely affect each individual. For many, these tides erect disproportionate barriers. Despite change occurring, women remain limited by the institutional structures imposed upon them. To surmount these barriers, Jenkins prescribes obstinate determination. In her view, institutional constraints provide individuals with the opportunity to ‘step sideways and decide not to be limited’ by systemic injustices.

An ability to elude these obstacles is a mark of philosophical virtue.

These various underlying tides have become entangled with Fiona Jenkins’ philosophical ventures. Currently, she seeks to observe the complex interaction between these currents. As philosophers endeavour into undiscovered regions, the work of Associate Professor Fiona Jenkins will help dismantle the complex mechanisms that have stifled the voices of women philosophers. A more potent exchange of ideas will ensue.

Comment

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Give Nick Kyrgios a break: apart from his tennis he’s not for idolising

Text: Michael Gimmel

Most of us know that sinking feeling of betrayal when one of our heroes is revealed to be less than the epitome of moral virtue we thought them to be. It’s not uncommon these days, and particularly in the realm of sports the list is growing long quickly. Given the magnitude and regularity of these falls from grace – from Marion Jones to Lance Armstrong – one has to wonder why we even place sports stars up on this pedestal in the first place.

Whilst this phenomenon is not endemic to Australia, idolising sports stars is very much a part of our culture. We do it unthinkingly; it’s a natural progression that goes with the territory. It’s assumed in our cultural DNA that if you’re good at sports then you’re probably a good person. If you doubt this, you need only to go down to the National Museum to see Phar Lap’s encased heart and witness immortalised perfection – and he wasn’t even human! In earning the praise of the public it doesn’t matter which sport you play, so long as you’re good enough.

One might think we pump up sports stars only to watch them spectacularly deflate.

Yet the reason why we do it is simple: we love sport, and it’s easy to conflate attributes needed to excel in sport to attributes desirable in life. At face value, the virtues of hard work, self-motivation and overcoming physical and mental hardship should be transferable across disciplines. Striving to be – and actually

becoming – the best at a particular thing is a noble pursuit, no question. But attributes are attributes; they can be used for good or ill. As a society we don’t think a hard-working, self-motivated criminal who overcomes physical and mental hardship to commit a crime is worthy of idolisation. Shouldn’t we then be asking ourselves why, for example, a full-time ball-hitter is necessarily a good role model for our kids?

This is not to argue that sports stars cannot be role models – and of course, they shouldn’t break the law. My point is that we shouldn’t automatically assign them to the ‘role model’ category. Instead of having to worry about modelling good behaviour, sports stars should model the exemplary sporting skills for which they have actually trained.

And here we arrive at Nick Kyrgios. If you’ve made it this far, I hope to have already convinced you that we shouldn’t be idolising him. If you’re in the majority of haters then you probably agree.

Yet the damage caused by this ill-placed moral expectation has already been done: we’ve already thrown this young man under the bus. And I use the word ‘we’ deliberately here as opposed to just ‘the media’, ‘trolls’, or ‘Dawn Fraser’.

The standard we allow is the standard we all accept. We have slandered this prodigious tennis talent 10 times more egregiously than anything he has ever said or done on the court. And this is the other point about Kyrgios: all his antics have occurred on court. Unlike Bernard Tomic’s Lamborghini joyriding down Cavill Avenue or his late night partying in Miami, Kyrgios is hated and shamed

for moments of passion and inexperience which occur on court in the heat of the moment.

school. He’s a young man whose life is playing out in public, and surely we should give him a break.

Why is it that we can’t show empathy and attempt to forgive Kyrgios’ teenage petulance and youthful arrogance? Recently SMH journalist Malcolm Knox declared he wasn’t remotely ‘interested in tennis’ whilst simultaneously jumping on the bandwagon to attack Kyrgios’ character, labelling him a ‘dickhead … uneducated, precociously spoilt [and] insulated from the real world’. The hysteria that Kyrgios whips up in some people is astounding: Knox went on to shame all Australians who might dare to support Kyrgios, especially if he won the upcoming Davis Cup match against the USA (he did). It is bad enough having Dawn Fraser telling you to go back to where your parents came from. But shaming the Australian public for considering the act of forgiving juvenile behaviour is not only ironic but disgraceful.

This outrage towards sports stars wouldn’t occur if we didn’t expect them to be role models in the first place. Nick Kyrgios signed up to play tennis, and tennis he does unbelievably well. He didn’t seek or choose to become a beacon of moral and social standing and nor should he have to be. I get that we love sport, but can’t we just accept that a good tennis player isn’t necessarily going to be a good role model for our children?

Perhaps we need to resurrect villains in sport like in the days of the now-revered John McEnroe, where spectators would build up a villain as a theatrical device without judging whether they were a bad person.

The hypocrisy of expecting a 21-yearold kid to be a role model for our society only to abuse him when he fails to meet that expectation is absurd. It’s also an outrageous outsourcing of moral responsibility. The boy needs guidance, yet we expected him to guide us. In today’s professional world of tennis, if you aren’t given a racket as you come out of the womb and serving an ace before you say the word ‘deuce’ you simply aren’t going to make it as a tennis professional.

Kyrgios trained here in Canberra at the Australian Institute of Sport. He trained to play tennis – he wasn’t in the seminary training to be a monk or attending etiquette classes at a June Dally-Watkins

What this whole debate reveals is that we aren’t sure which groups of people we should idolise today. With religious institutions distrusted, politicians loathed and memberships to clubs on the wane, sport stars are easy targets in a shrinking field. Surely, though, we can look a bit harder. There are many fabulous role models in our society doing worthwhile things that we should do more to recognise and praise. Because until we find a replacement category, sports stars will likely remain on this unsuitable pedestal.

17

Text: Matt Rogers

So you’re about to graduate, you need to finish off your thesis, you’re applying for dozens of graduate programs, you need to prepare a writing sample for the masters degree you want to do. You stay up until 4am every night of the week leading up to your thesis defence, and you need to get up at seven in the morning to make it to your interview day with DFAT. You have vague memories of sleep, and some hazy idea that all this stuff you are doing will make you happy in some way. Then it hits you.

Fuck it.

Doing things seems so natural; like breathing, bleeding, and working yourself to death. It is no surprise, perhaps, that the world we live in was created by the ‘doers’ we hear about from the likes of TED Talkers and Shia LaBeouf. But fuck doers: they got us into this mess.

In many ways, we are probably the most accomplished generation – shout out to me and a few others for keeping the average down – yet we are simultaneously so much more wracked with self-doubt and anxiety. There are real reasons for that; real systemic problems with our world that participation will not solve.

You and I are going to compete for the same jobs, lowering our standards each time, casting our net wider than we ever imagined doing. You, me and 10,000 other people aren’t all going to fit into the offices of DFAT or the ABC or even ASIO, PwC, and the High Court of Australia.

In fact, as an aside, my rejection email from DFAT reads as follows: ‘We received a considerable response this year, with over 2,500 well-qualified candidates.’

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Comment

Doing Nothing as a Political Act

My rejection from the Victorian Public Service is more candid: ‘Your responses to our assessed questions have not met our selection criteria benchmarks.’ ASIS did not even tell me I’d gotten rejected ‘for security reasons’.

I remain in a kind of cynical awe of the people who seem to be constantly applying for some scholarship, job, or exchange program. We feel like if our resume doesn’t represent wall-to-wall internships, stupol positions, volunteering and part-time work, then we’ve wasted the past three – I’m being generous here – years.

Some of us will crash hard into the gig economy, having singularly failed to secure the post-university employment our parents and teachers promised us.

We’ll drive our Ubers and contract out our labour as our working standards remain as low as our respect for ourselves.

All of this is going to happen, whether we like it or not – let’s at least have the dignity to be lazy while we do it. Half-hearting something might be a small act, but it’s rebellious in its own way, subversive to the dominant narrative.

Think about yourself as a hunter-gatherer, minding your own business, chasing gazelle around the place and picking berries. Then along comes another hunter-gatherer carrying a clipboard, who says: ‘I’ve had a word with the others, and we’re going to start building some stuff, so we’re going to need you to stop lazing around out here and help us out.’

Fuck you, clipboard guy.

Laziness is seemingly an affliction of the poor and destitute, at least in the eyes of the Murdoch press and most of Parliament. You receive welfare from the state?

You are a lazy drain on resources. Well – be a lazy drain on resources. Let the

News Corp journalists take time out of their day of scaremongering the public about immigrants to shake their fist at you.

Mine is a call for solidarity with my comrades in laziness, although, a half-hearted one; let’s not expend too much effort.

Take some time now and then to do nothing. Not to distract yourself. Don’t procrastinate from doing something.

I mean decidedly do nothing. Stare at nothing and think about nothing. Some people call this meditation, I call it: ‘This isn’t meditation because I’m not pretending this means anything,’ When you were a kid you didn’t care that playing with the butterflies in the garden wasn’t part of your Machiavellian plan to get preselection for the Labor Party. You just did nothing because it seemed like the most enjoyable thing to do. It didn’t stop being the most enjoyable thing to do.

I’m not saying, ‘take some time off, it’ll all be alright, you’ll find something’.

Honestly, it probably won’t. We live in a cutthroat world where you sink or swim, like a shark. All I’m saying is, sharks are assholes.

Comment

Issue 6, Vol. 67

18

Sticks, Stones and Microaggressions Text: Sumithri Venketasubramanian

The protocol of meeting someone new at university is pretty standard: Hi, hello, how are you? What do you study? So, where are you from? Oh, but… ‘... where are you really from?’

Some of us are a little more familiar with this question than others. For the ones who don’t resemble the colonisers of Australia, we’re asked this because you want to know our ethnicity, our race, our ancestry. Some may enthusiastically respond by sharing stories about how their grandparents came here. But for many, this question is alienating – it tells them that there’s a particular way to be a local and, unfortunately, they do not fit the bill very well. And for those whose ancestors have lived on the continent for millennia, it’s just downright disrespectful to their continuing histories.

Microaggressions are little everyday questions and remarks that are telling of assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices that we may hold about particular people based on their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, class, disability or other identity. Often, we don’t realise that what we’re saying may not be the most inclusive, but what’s important is

that we grow to become aware of this and we put in the effort to unlearn and learn. It can be daunting to live in fear that everything that we say and do is bad. So, how do we identify these hidden -isms in our language, and even actions?

Microaggressions are what they are not because of what is said, but rather what is implied by what is said; this makes them significantly harder to pick out as compared to explicit slurs. What helps me is to think about whether there are harmful stereotypes or assumptions which have shaped a comment or joke. For example, a remark that a building isn’t wheelchair-friendly is a fact, but stating that making modifications to make it more accessible is a waste of money is a microaggression, as it implies that people with disabilities are somehow ‘less than’ in our society. Or – this one hits home – asking your South Asian friend to pick dishes at a North Indian restaurant because they obviously know what’s good is a microaggression because it assumes a connection to certain cuisine based on broad generalisations about ethnicity. (Of course, this doesn’t apply if said friend volunteered their gastronomical expertise. In this case, all the more power to them.)

These instances are tough to call out because they’re not black and white, and we can never know what people’s intentions are. Even the most pure-hearted

may be guilty of exclusive language, but this may come from a place of genuine ignorance and isn’t a reflection on their sincerity and goodness as a person. Efforts to explain may be brushed aside – ‘It’s just banter, I don’t mean anything by it!’ But, whatever the motivation, words can cut, and it’s important to challenge such language to make spaces safe and comfortable for everyone.

A strategy that one of my friends pointed out to me was to ask someone to explain what they’d said, feigning curiosity and ignorance, because that would force them to think critically about it and expose its underlying prejudices.

We may instead choose to inform them that their choice of words may not have been the most inclusive, point them to articles explaining why, and leave it up to them to educate themselves. Some of us may go the extra step and go into detail about what they’d said and break it down and walk through it with them.

However, it may be incredibly intimidating to do so especially when in big circles or if the culprit is someone in a position of authority.

What’s important to note is that when we call people out, we’re not fulfilling an obligation, but instead are doing them a favour. There’s absolutely no pressure to do so in circumstances where we may not feel the most comfortable or safe, such as if we fear it may compromise

important relationships with others or poorly impact our mental health.

At times when there’s someone who’s affected by such microaggressions, it’s important to take note of our privilege in those situations and allow them to speak to their experiences and discomfort if they choose to. However, it shouldn’t be on them to justify or explain their identity in any circumstance, and so shouldn’t be thrown into the spotlight tokenistically as a ‘case in point’ – for example: ‘Can you imagine how that would have made Sumi feel right now?’.

Calling out should come from the perspective of something having been inappropriate in itself, not only because there are people in the room whom may have been affected by it.

Because we’re socialised with internalised -isms within our everyday language, whether we mean harm or not, microaggressions aren’t something we can get rid of all in one day. What matters, though, is that we’re working towards changing this in a way that is respectful, safe and comfortable.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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Comment // International

New elections, fresh hope?

Why you should care about the presidential election in Korea

Text: Sang Myung Lee

Elections signal new hope. This is the beauty of democracy; power can be easily transferred from one party to the other, and mature democracies like Australia and the United States are perfect examples. The electorate can show support for an incumbent through a vote of confidence or to voice discontent through voting for the opposition. Albeit within a short history of democracy, for South Koreans, this presidential election could be the turning point in Korean politics.

With the first female President of Korea, Park Geun-Hye, being impeached on 10 March, the presidential election took place on 9 May. The title of ‘first female president’ was a signal of hope, progress and gender equality in politics.

That hope has been shattered with the corruption and the bureaucratic failure of Park’s administration.

Korean politics has traditionally been about regionalism between Honam and Yeongnam area. The former is liberal and

progressive while the latter is staunchly conservative. Former president Park Geun-Hye and her father, Park Chunghee, are from the Yeongnam area and naturally have the conservatives as the core of their supporters. However, with the strongman’s daughter falling out of politics in a disgraceful manner, it seems to have highlighted the fragility and superficiality of regional politics to the Korean electorate.

For example, the People’s Party is very strong in the Honam area, holding 23 out of 28 parliamentary seats. However, during the recent election the People Party’s presidential candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, enjoyed support from the centre-right and conservatives. Such a phenomenon is eccentric because in the 2012 presidential elections, Ahn’s support base was largely young adults who are liberal. Perhaps it signals that Korean democracy is moving in a matured direction where it is no longer plagued by the regional rivalry, and the electorate now looks at the candidate’s’ abilities and policies. Or it could just have been conservatives’ attempts to prevent the more liberal Moon Jae-in of the

Democratic Party from taking power.

Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye signals the strength of democracy in Korea and the Korean people’s power.

President-elect Moon Jae-in being more liberal and progressive is expected to shake up South Korea’s foreign policy.

Compared to the aggressive and hardline approach against the North by the previous conservative government, Moon Jae-in is expected to take friendlier approach to Kim Jong Un and his regime, hoping to replicate the détente enjoyed in early 2000s between the liberal governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun and Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il. Similarly, Moon will be hoping to improve relations with neighbouring China, with the issue of controversial implementation of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) to be tackled. Moon will also seek to re-negotiate the landmark agreement between South Korea and Japan regarding the wartime sex slaves also known as ‘comfort women’.

Moon Jae-in won the elections with 41.1 per cent of votes while runners-up Hong Jun-pyo and Ahn Cheol-soo received 24 and 21.4 per cent respectively. While one may argue that with 59 per cent of the electorate voting for another candidate Moon does not have the backing of the public, Moon had nearly 5.6 million more votes than Hong, the biggest margin in the history of democratic South Korea.

So far, Moon Jae-in’s first few days in the Blue House have been freshening and he seems to be living up to the expectations of the public – a recent survey shows that 83.8 per cent of the population feel Moon will do a good job. Another presidential election is finally over in South Korea.

The electorate chose to voice its discontent with the conservative government through voting for Moon, resulting in his rise to presidency. Now it’s time for Moon to prove to the Korean electorate that they made the right decision in voting for him.

Comment // International

Issue 6, Vol. 67

20

The Apotheosis of Ahok

Text: Kevin Marco Tanaya

If you had been following Indonesian politics, then Ahok must have been like a real breath of fresh air.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, better known as ‘Ahok’, is the incumbent Governor of Jakarta. He is a peculiar figure in Indonesian politics, and he is outspoken and brash – two character traits you don’t expect from an Indonesian politician.

What made him much more unorthodox was that he was a ‘double-minority’, being a Christian and Chinese.

After Joko Widodo became president in 2014, Ahok automatically became his replacement as governor of Jakarta.

It quickly became apparent that he was good. He carried on Joko’s system of e-budgeting for the city’s budget, which made the budget transparent for all to see. He launched an app that allowed citizens to make reports to the public service, which was able to reduce red tape.

He adopted a no-nonsense approach to Jakarta’s bureaucrats. Under him, Jakarta’s notorious floods dried quicker than before and its streets are cleaner than ever. He tore down the notorious Kalijodo red light district in Jakarta and replaced it with a public park complete with skateboard ramp. He enforced a rule which forbids street-hawkers from the National Monument complex in Jakarta, thus preventing the area from being congested and untidy.

You might think that after all of this, Ahok would be a popular man. But his

abrasive personality and brutal honesty made him some powerful enemies.

This included figures from Jakarta’s city council, which he stared down over the city’s budget. The fact that he was basically an independent politician certainly did not help either.

Despite this, it was clear that Ahok was the favourite in the 2017 Gubernatorial election. Polls have consistently rated him as the most popular candidate for the job. His enemies had nothing to criticise him for, aside from his impoliteness. This made me sure that he was going to win.

But fate threw a curveball. In late 2016, a video surfaced where he appeared to insult a certain part of the Islamic holy book, the Quran. This was the opportunity that his political enemies needed. It doesn’t matter to them that the video was edited. His opponent in the race stayed silent, to them this was a political boon to boost their trailing poll numbers. To the ultraconservative Muslims, he was now the consummate blasphemer, a political dajjal (antichrist). This resulted in a massive demonstration involving 250,000 people in Jakarta, self-titled the ‘peaceful action’ even though the rhetoric was certainly not. The following month saw political chaos which included the arrest of certain public figures for charges of conspiracy and the trial of Ahok for blasphemy, which is a crime under Indonesian law.

Ahok cried as he read his defence statement in the court. He denied any intention to blaspheme Islam. The prosecutors brought out witness after witness, although it quickly became apparent that none of their statements were

credible. The court case dragged on throughout the election, as Ahok was facing an ever-growing challenge from his two rivals, Agus Yudhoyono and Anies Baswedan.

All came to a head in the first round of polling. Ahok won the first round easily, and I was encouraged that after all of this, he would triumph in the end. I thought that there was no way that Jakartans will not re-elect a man who is that good at his job.

It was dinner time as I opened my phone to check the news on 19 April. I nearly choked. The polls showed Ahok trailing.

I couldn’t believe it. I held out hope that some late surge will deliver him to victory. But, at the end of the day, he lost. By nearly one million votes, no less.

I was completely aghast. Did Jakartans refuse a man who demonstrated such an ability and courage for no apparent reason other than his minority status and his ‘blasphemy’, for which he had repeatedly apologised?

I thought that Jakartans would rise above petty, sectarian politics to elect someone purely on the basis of the competency. I was truly disillusioned.

I was prepared to give up on my country altogether. For me, this was not about who gets to be governor. It was a battle for Indonesia’s soul. A test on whether we are truly the tolerant nation we said we are. In a time where populism swallows Europe, America has put a sexist incompetent in charge and Turkey is effectively killing their democracy, I thought Indonesia could show the world we can be better by rejecting sectarianism and

intolerance. To rub it in, the court actually sent him to jail. Has his work counted for nothing in the end?

But, I realised that it was not for nothing. For me, and hopefully, for many young Indonesians, Ahok was a hero. He restored my faith in politics and made me believe once again that politics can be a vehicle for change. His bravery and tenacity showed me, and many Indonesians, how we can and must stand up against corruption and incompetence. I believe that future generations will look at Ahok, not as a foul-mouthed blasphemer but a martyr, a man way ahead of its time trying to change a nation that just wasn’t ready to accept him. He may be defeated now, but the ideas he stood up for has not.

That is why I cannot afford to give up.

That is why any Indonesian who shared my dream of a free, democratic, progressive Indonesia cannot afford to give up.

That is why people from every nation who are disillusioned by their respective countries politics must not give up. We are the next generation. If we give up, those who seek to ruin our country will win. We owe it to our heroes, political martyrs like Ahok, to not give up. We owe it to the future generations to not give up. To paraphrase the man himself: If we are right, we shall remain bright.

Because no darkness can hold back the light of dawn.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

21

Comment // International

Content Warning: Homophobic Violence

An Invitation to Execution: Chechnya’s Anti-LGBTQI+ Purge

Text: Rotem Nusem

In an attempt to rid Chechnya of ‘non-traditional’ practices, the President of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has vowed to eliminate the entire Chechen LGBTQI+ population by the beginning of Ramadan.

The 26th of May 2017 will mark the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. While Muslims all over the world will be commemorating the first revelation of the Quran, 26 May will symbolise a much more sinister turn for the Chechen LGBTQI+ community.

Chechen ideology centres on a ‘pure nation’, embedded in traditionalism, Putinism and a conservative interpretation of Sufi Islam, making it a hostile punitive regime. Collective punishment has been the hallmark of Kadyrov’s repression.

On 1 April, reports emerged that over 100 gay men had been rounded up and imprisoned in an unlawful and unofficial concentration camp near the city of Argun. Novaya Gazeta, a leading independent Russian newspaper, was the first publication to report on the purge, claiming that over 30 gay men have been killed by the regime since December 2016, with countless others missing.

Many of the survivors tell the same eerie story, involving deceit and betrayal in their capture. Through social media networks, these men had arranged dates with other gay friends, only to be met by security officials and vigilantes. In these alleged concentration camps, men are told that they are animals, non-human and that they will die there. One of the

survivors claimed the Chechen officials told him that Chechen men have ‘no right to be gay’, they have to be ‘warriors, straight, sportsmen’.

The reason this particular story has struck a chord with me is that my ancestors also experienced this kind of systematic purge, my ancestors were also imprisoned in concentration camps.

Approximately 60 survivors who have sought asylum throughout Europe have spoken out about beatings, electrocutions, starvation and various assaults.

The aim: obtaining names of other gay men to detain. A user of Vkontakte, a Russian social networking site, wrote about a 16-year-old boy who had been detained in a Chechen village, returning home ‘all beaten, just a sack of bones.’

As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, and unfortunately, as a descendent of those who did not survive, I am pained to reflect that our ‘never again’ vow clearly doesn’t hold against these regimes.

Since reading about this anti-LGBTQI+ purge, I have told anyone who will listen. I know that countless atrocities are being committed around the world and the persecution of LGBTQI+ communities is certainly not new.

Owen Jones wrote a particularly poignant article for The Guardian titled ‘Let’s answer Chechen brutality with a global uprising against homophobia’. The article points out that we empathise with those we feel our equals.

Jones highlighted that when atrocities are written in history, we side with the tormented.

But to me, the fact that in a decade’s time no one will hesitate to condemn

Kadyrov doesn’t change the reality that a whole generation of Chechen LGBTQI+ people will be wiped out if we do not act.

his uncle, while another was taken to the forest by his family, who then killed and buried him there.

Elena Milashina, the journalist who first investigated these reports, has now been forced to flee Chechnya, with countless death threats from officials and members of the community. She says that days after she published evidence of the purge, 15,000 people gathered in the main mosque of Chechnya to declare jihad against Novaya Gazeta. Grozny Info, Chechnya’s official news source, has spoken out against Novaya Gazeta and its journalists for trying to discredit the Chechen government, people, and their traditional values, adding that this was an attempt by journalists to ‘foster sodomy’.

While Chechnya is a Russian Republic, journalists contend that the Russian Constitution and Law are not respected in the Northern Caucus. Vladimir Putin’s earliest comments suggested that witnesses are remaining anonymous because they have no proof of this purge.

Most recently, Putin backed an inquiry into the reported crackdown, referring to the allegations as ‘rumours, you could say’.

The Interior Minister of Chechnya claimed the reports were an ‘April fool’s joke’, denying allegations that the Chechen government is systematically purging its LGBTQI+ community.

Meanwhile, President Kadyrov’s spokesperson denied the existence of LGBTQI+ people in Chechnya, stating that ‘if there were such people in Chechnya, law enforcement agencies wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.’

This is particularly disturbing as many survivors have said that to return home is ‘an invitation to execution’. Relatives continue to be shamed and monitored for having homosexual family members. To rid themselves of the ‘stain’ of homosexual relatives, families have been ‘cleaning their honour with blood’ – killing their gay relatives to appease themselves, their community and the regime. A 17-year-old homosexual boy was pushed off a ninth-floor balcony by

In a frankly uncomfortable interview with Yahoo! News, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, refused to elaborate on Moscow’s response to these reprehensible crimes. After stating that Russia has launched an investigation, Zakharova repeatedly attempted to deflect further questions.

The Russian administration’s lack of urgency on the matter, despite condemnation from Germany, the UK, Human Rights Watch and countless others, is concerning and disheartening. It has made me reflect on our role as global citizens, but more specifically our helplessness as global citizens.

This piece is for the ancestors I never met, in hopes that we as an international community will do something before it’s too late.

This piece is for the descendants of the Chechen LGBTQI+ community, who in 60 years will look back and feel their ancestors’ histories were cut brutally short, just as I do.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Comment // International

22

Made In China

Lotus Footprints Text: Una Chen Una is a second year law/arts student who is passionate about voicing the concerns of the Asian minority. When she is not focused on decorating her apartment, she is dedicated to uncovering the hidden faces of society and dismantling Asian stereotypes.

1910, China.

Zunyan* turned 13 last week. Looking at her feet, she is happy with the result. The length is four inches. Perfect, she thought, now I’m finally beautiful, and I’ll be wanted. If it was an inch too long, she thought, it’ll be considered an ‘iron lotus’, and the pain I went through would have been for nothing.

It has been a long and painful progress for Zunyan. On her fifth birthday, she was given a process that would help her marriage prospects. It was necessary, she was told. Hot water cascaded over the skin of her foot every two days so they could be more malleable to bend: every toe apart from the big toes were cracked and broken. Her arch was also bent. The excruciating pain of walking was forgotten. Even eight years onwards, Zunyan winced at the thought. She had to walk a long distance every day so her arch could break. It was rewarding though, as after two years her shoes became smaller and smaller and it her feet were finally beautiful. *** Originally starting in the 10th century, the tradition of foot binding went on for decades before finally stopping in the 20th century with a ban in 1911. The last of the ‘lotus’ shoe factory closed in 1999.

Bewilderment is not the first word that comes to mind when I hold the miniature shoes that were once worn. First thinking they had belonged to a doll, I had thought they were cute. Upon understanding the true owner’s pain in reaching the goal of trying to squeeze into these shoes, horror clouded in my mind.

Foot binding was considered beautiful – it took inspiration from a court dancer named Yao Niang, who had feet like the new moon. Emperor Li Yu thought the dance was enchanting, especially liking the unique gait. Once someone has their foot bound, they relied heavily on walking with the thigh and buttocks. Like the obsession with waifish waists in Victorian England, they were a symbol of beauty and attractiveness. It was a symbol of social class: a smaller foot often meant better marriage. The Emperor’s preference inspired many other court ladies to begin foot binding, hence beginning to make it something that was exclusive to the upper class. Male economic power was already reiterated by foot binding.

It developed into a social status: if you could afford to wed a wife who could not work and was regarded as unproductive economically, then you were wealthy and had a luxurious life. You couldn’t walk with ‘lotus feet’ (feet that have been through the process of being

bound), but that didn’t matter as the upper class scarcely needed to work in the farms: this, of course, spread and soon most women went through this arduous process.

With the turbulent change modern China has gone through, foot binding is now referred to as historical and archaic. Even though it is still possible to find women with their foot bound, they do it without authorities’ knowledge. *** Her tiny shoes are a symbol of her hope and desires. They say pain is beauty, but this is a unique culture phenomenon that has encompassed Chinese women for more than a century. Like her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and so forth, Zunyan believes small feet to be her currency in exchange for a good life. *dignity in Chinese

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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Lire avec un regard neuf Text: Harriet Kesby

À quand remonte la dernière fois que tu as tenu, cher lecteur, un roman entre tes mains (ou un écran numérique qui affichait les mots de ce dernier) ? Pas le dernier livre – qui était sans doute un manuel de droit des sociétés ou ton exemplaire précieux de Bravo! si tu as le plaisir de prendre des cours de français de deuxième année – mais le dernier roman, la dernière œuvre de littérature qui t’a passionné, dont les pages tu as tourné avec impatience pendant ton temps libre, sans prendre des notes, sans réfléchir à quelle citation choisir pour ton rapport ou ta dissertation. Si je ne me trompe pas, pour la plupart d’entre nous cela constitue un plaisir dont nous nous privons déjà depuis un certain temps.

En effet, selon une étude réalisée en 2015 sur les pratiques et les préférences en matière de lecture des jeunes Australiens, la lecture est classée comme une activité de loisir préférée de seulement un cinquième de participants. Qui plus est, 32% d’entre eux préféreraient ne pas, ou ne jamais, lire pendant leur temps libre, tandis que l’usage de l’ordinateur (et d’Internet) a été signalé comme activité de loisir privilégiée de 61% des jeunes interrogés. J’avoue que, bien que cela n’ait pas été toujours le cas, je suis moi-même coupable d’allumer Netflix dans mes moments libres (qui sont de plus en plus rares d’ailleurs). Il s’agit d’un désir de ne plus devoir me concentrer sur quoi que ce soit ; de débrancher mon esprit.

Pourtant lors du réveillon du premier de l’an 2017, s’étant rendu compte que j’avais lu (et n’en avais pas fini à lire beaucoup plus) un grand total de deux livres tout au long de l’année précédente, j’ai décidé qu’il était grand temps que je retrouve mon amour de la lecture. Je m’étais toujours enorgueillie d’être une jeune femme assez cultivée, mais tout d’un coup je me suis demandé combien d’œuvres importantes, des grands auteurs de littérature, avais-je même lues pendant ma vingtaine d’années d’existence ? Pas assez, j’ai conclu. Évidemment, je pouvais facilement trouver maintes excuses pour expliquer ce bilan lamentable – avant tout, le fait que je lisais un tas de documents, d’articles, une pléthore de littérature académique pour mes cours – mais cela ne changeait rien au fait que je voulais lire plus. Soudain, la réalisation morbide que regarder le prochain épisode de 13 Reasons Why se traduisait par moins de livres lus avant ma mort m’a frappé. Je me suis donc résolue à consacrer plus de temps à la lecture.

Cela me mène à une question fondamentale : Pourquoi lire ? À quoi bon se passionner pour des récits inventés ou même des histoires vraies, versions desquels l’on peut regarder sur un écran en beaucoup moins de temps et sans le niveau de concentration qu’exige la lecture ?

Tout d’abord, l’intelligence se cultive par la lecture. Comme l’a résumé Dr. Seuss, « Plus tu lis, plus tu sauras de choses. Plus tu apprends, à plus d’endroits tu iras. » La lecture contribue au développement d’un vocabulaire plus riche, améliore les compétences rédactionnelles, augmente l’éloquence et la cohérence de notre parole, renforce la fonction de mémoire, nous aide à bien dormir, et j’en passe. De plus, une étude récemment publiée par des chercheurs à l’université de Sussex a démontré que la lecture pourrait réduire le stress de jusqu’à 68%.

On apprend beaucoup de choses à la maison, à l’école, de nos amis et des bouches de ceux qui sont plus sages et intelligents que nous-mêmes. Il n’en reste pas moins que beaucoup des choses les plus précieuses qu’on sait viennent de la littérature qu’on a lue. Si l’on lit bien, on réussit à engager dans un dialogue avec les esprits les plus créatifs de notre époque et du passé. Le temps consacré à lire de la littérature n’est jamais du temps perdu ; on ne peut pourtant pas dire la même chose à propos du temps passé sur nos portables, ce qui constitue 3.9 ans de la vie de la personne moyenne, soit 23 jours par an. À ne pas oublier non plus est le fait que la lecture de littérature dans ta deuxième ou troisième langue est garantie à faire des miracles pour tes connaissances de cette langue.

Je suis tout à fait d’accord avec le philosophe Alain qui a répondu à la question, « Comment apprend-on une langue ? » en disant « Par les grands auteurs, pas autrement. Par les phrases les plus serrées, les plus riches, les plus profondes, et non par les niaiseries d’un manuel de conversation ».

Je t’offre une dernière réflexion : la plupart des gens ne consommeront pas plus de 1.000 œuvres de littérature au cours de leur vie d’adulte. Combien de livres penses-tu avoir déjà lus ? 200 ?

300 ? Pense au nombre qui te reste. Et assure-toi de choisir intelligemment le reste.

An English translation of this article is available at woroni.com.au

Prompted // Multilingual

Dhinggaa gaba!

Good meat!

Text: Mark Ellison and Nina Gruenewald

Minyadhi bundaanhi guda maal dhuludhi?

Why did koala 1 fall out of the tree?

Balunhi nhama.

It was dead.

Minyadhi bundaanhi guda bulaarr dhuludhi?

Why did koala 2 fall out of the tree?

Ngaragaydha nhama garran-garran.

Because it was stuck to the other one.

Minyadhi bundaanhi guda gulibaa dhuludhi?

Why did koala 3 fall out of the tree?

Ngaragaygiirr gigigu.

Peer pressure.

Minyadhi ganunga mil waandu dhay? Dhinggaa gaba!

Why did the crow eat their eyes? Good meat!

The story is a well-known joke (or anti-joke according to reddit) in Australian primary schools. We’ve translated it into Gamilaraay for fun. The last line, however, is drawn from a recent composition we heard in class, in which a young girl sings to consistently cheerful music about seeing a kangaroo; seeing a snake; seeing the snake biting the kangaroo, and the kangaroo hopping around; seeing the kangaroo dying; and then seeing a crow eating it, with the singer exclaiming “good meat!”

Gamilaraay does not have a continuous history. Like many Australian languages, it died out under pressure from English.

Yet enthusiastic heirs to the culture, along with linguists like our teacher John Giacon (winner of the first Patji-Dawes award for language teaching), have worked on reclaiming their language from the past. All of us in the class are doing projects in the form of stories, translations or educational videos, adding to the stock of materials in or about the language. Our koala joke is another small contribution.

Prompted

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Is it Important to Look ‘Fresh’ For as Long as Possible?

Text: Phoebe Lupton

As a young woman living in today’s society, I know what it feels like to want to be beautiful. I consume vast amounts of media on a daily – if not hourly – basis, so I am constantly being bombarded with images coupled with the implication, ‘if you want to be beautiful, you have to look like this.’ But that is not the discussion I want to have right now. Instead, I want to discuss the relationships between older people and the concept of beauty. At 18 years of age, I am still very young and have the privilege of looking ‘fresh’ by virtue of this fact. But what is the significance of appearing youthful?

Is this a demand that continues as we age?

It’s no secret that people who are considered attractive have proven to be more desirable in society, particularly in the workplace. According to a Newsweek article by Jessica Bennett, ‘attractive’ men earn an extra five per cent in comparison to their ‘less attractive’ counterparts, while attractive women earn an extra four per cent. But what does this mean for those over 50 who still do paid

work? In a Time article, journalist Mark Miller discovered that full-time workers aged 55 to 64 were earning two-thirds less in earnings than the average rate. He also found that people in this age group who are employed at a new job tend to earn 25 per cent less than in their previous job.

This is a strong indication of ageism in the workplace. But can this be attributed to these individuals’ physical appearances? As Carol. A. Gosselink explains in her paper Ravishing or Ravished, yes, it can. Gosselink found that two of the most idealised aspects of physical beauty are youthfulness and thinness. As most women gain approximately 1.7 kilograms per year from the ages 48 - 56, the message is clear; young is in.

This message is likely to have a strong impact on self-esteem and self-perception among older women. Gosselink writes that older women’s opinions of their physical appearance are often harsher than those of younger women. They are also at a higher risk of developing mental health issues such as anxiety and depression as a result of the pressure to be ‘young and beautiful’ – particularly in Western societies.

Indeed, I have discussed older women and their experiences with the beauty industry – Gosselink specifies that women generally tend to be more affected by beauty standards compared to men – but this does not mean that men are not also affected by such standards.

In February of this year the Wall Street Journal published an article titled ‘Why Men Have Such a Hard Time Aging’. In the article, journalist Dana Wechsler Linden writes that aging severely impacts upon a man’s sense of masculinity.

Due to the frailness and deterioration in physical capabilities that comes with old age, the strength and independence that is desired of men by our society becomes increasingly intangible. Older men are therefore less likely to reach out for medical help for fear of how their masculinity will be perceived.

However, things appear to be looking up for older people and their relationships with beauty. In 2016, beauty and lifestyle website Allure released a video on their YouTube channel called, ‘Dispelling beauty myths: aging with grace’.

In this video, three women over the age of 50 share their experiences with their own supposed beauty and sentiments towards it. One of these women was 71-year-old Norma Kamali who in the

video recounts how on her 21st birthday, her mother told her that ‘it all goes downhill from here,’ when it comes to her physical appearance. She also notes her observation of ‘young, ageless women’ being portrayed as the ideal beautiful woman, even though these people are ‘the most vulnerable’. Kamali even mentions how she herself thought she ‘wasn’t pretty’ as a young woman but now as a 71-year-old, she feels ‘more beautiful than ever’.

This video is not perfect – it shows the stories of only three women and no other gender is included in the discussion on that particular platform. But the video now has over 300,000 views. It is part of Allure’s series of videos regarding beauty myths, all of which have had more than 50,000 views each, indicating that the portrayal of this subject matter in popular media has great scope in terms of the numbers of people that it can reach. Perhaps if we advertise that it is acceptable – or even desirable – to be an older person in today’s society, we will not feel as much pressure to look ‘fresh’ as we age.

FEED THE HAIGERS Text: Kate Lewis

Haig Park: named after World War I hero Earl Haig, right?

Wrong.

At a mere two years of age, Canberra was graced with the presence of its own magical creatures: beings which go by the name of ‘Haigers’. In the early 1920s their chosen place of residence was named Haig Park in their honour, and donations of food lined Northbourne Avenue in the hopes of keeping them in Australia’s capital city.

Decades later, unfortunately, the detestable rumour was spread about Haig Park’s ‘true’ namesake (whether Canberrans truly stopped believing, or were merely no longer bothered to donate food, I do not know), and the Haigers slipped out of public knowledge, struggling for survival for several years as a result. So used to the frequent home-delivery of nourishment, their limbs had lost their nimbleness, and try as they may to use Canberra’s wildlife to journey into the city, the animals would often eat the food before they could deliver it back to Haig Park (ibises were the worst for this, and Haiger frustration with these birds actually caused their near extinction in Canberra).

Fortunately, the construction of the Australian National University’s Fenner Hall brought new hope to the Haigers.

They have grown to love the wobbly-walking, word-slurring students who make their way from Mooseheads towards their Braddon residence on Thursday nights, dropping pieces of Maccas as they go. Haigers are wholly satisfied with this way of life, and have shown their appreciation by donning these fast-food wrappers as their new outfits and by creating an atmosphere of camaraderie and kinship for Fenner Hall residents as they trot to and from the city centre.

Just think how the creatures will feel once they discover that Fenner Hall be moved far away from Braddon, and that a light rail will be constructed along Northbourne too. Thanks to these changes, fewer people will pass Haig Park to scraps of food in the years to come, and the light of Maccas’ Golden Arches will become confined to a human container zooming past along two ridges of steel.

Please, dear reader, do not allow this Fennerless, light-railed future to arrive.

Rise up against these changes, for the sake of the Haigers.

Signed, a concerned resident of Fenner Hall

Illustration: Katie Ward

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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EXPLORING MASCULINITIES PULL OUT TODAY, I TURNED MAN

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It encompasses two very important ideas. Firstly, manhood is apparently temporal, and attaining manhood through time is important. To perhaps rephrase, it can be argued that men expect a period of transition or socialisation at some point during their adolescence where they move from a time and space distinctly understood as boyhood to a time and space distinctly understood as manhood. Secondly, manhood needs definitional parametres, or at least it needs some kind of concrete suggestion that there are specific circumstances or criteria that make masculinity, and therefore men, exist. This big question — when are we men? — may therefore need to be more broadly articulated to truly encompass its weight and implications. What do men think they are, who teaches them and what exactly are they being taught?

Words: Oliver Friedmann

Eight and you caught the bus home from school. Ten and you went to watch footy with your dad. Thirteen and you watch your first porn film. Fifteen and you spent a night in jail.

Sixteen and you lost your virginity. Eighteen and you drank your first legal beer.

Twenty and you moved out of home. Twenty-one and you’re 21.

Today I turned man.

The question of when we become men is a rightfully complicated question that gets to the heart of masculinity and its meaning.

We must first understand that discussions and studies that centre on masculinity mean different things to different people. In Geertz’s Balinese cockfight, masculinity and the expression of manhood is all about status. The Sri Lankan ‘horn game’, where two teams of men battle in honour of the goddess Pattini, attaches manhood to humiliation. Among the Sambia in Papua New Guinea, drinking semen is part of a process of separation from the mother designed to create warriors — men able to sustain themselves under the pain associated with tribal warfare.

But manhood in the West is quite distinct, mainly because no one is told what it actually is.

In Michael Kimmel’s Guyland, manhood is all about proving that you’re not gay. In schools, universities and entry-level boardrooms, to be a man is not premised on prestige, honour or integrity. Instead, the common understanding — although never voiced — has degenerated such that it can only be defined in opposition to males that have, for many historical reasons, become considered not masculine. Masculinity as an identity in and of itself has been left completely out of the conversation.

Where do we find ‘Guyland’? According to Kimmel, it is the arena continually occupied by men aged 18 to 25 in the United States. It is a time and space where boys are left to become men, where parents are no longer a primary source of moral influence and where that source of influence is reallocated to new peers — peers that are structured in hierarchies according to criteria that is often not entirely clear. In the US, this takes place most often in the college environment, a new living space where men often navigate independence, and therefore themselves, for the first time.

In cultures around the world, rites of passage are fundamental to major transitory periods of life. But what happens when these rituals are repressed, and then subsequently replaced? The ritual spaces for men to express themselves emotionally don’t exist. Some have argued that the sporting field is the only place where men are allowed to embrace other men, perhaps even cry. Masculinity provides a façade of surety; surety that boys have communal identity.

With this instability, what results is a situation where young boys rarely have male role models or mentors.

Men rarely talk about being men. Men rarely know what being a man means.

Kimmel suggests that during this period of their life, men reflexively and self referentially define their manhood according to a dogma that says anything homosexual is not manly. They learn what it means to be a man from men who have learnt how to be a man not by some kind of established process of dialogue or communication, but rather from an environment that for various social and cultural reasons has come to consider homosexuality as unmanly. Here we locate hazing, the rites of passage of our time. Recall stories of boys tying bricks to their penises and throwing them off rooftops, boys who are made to fight, boys drinking until they vomit all over each other. This is the manhood echo chamber.

Talk about masculinity is always missing from conversation where it most desperately needed. Conversation needs to explicitly address how it is that men are socialised to be men and what being this socialised man means.

Perhaps around the edges there are suggestions that men should be honourable, proud, stoic, competitive, protectors — suggestions that themselves have very important implications. But there are rarely adequately engaged with.

Why is this all a problem? We just need to take one look at a university campus to see how this issue plays out — the culture of alcohol abuse, sexual assault and violence all have some masculine roots that tentacle through young student communities. Masculinity itself sits at the very root of the patriarchy. It is where the gender imbalance comes to fester, to dance, to sneak and crawl silently, unaddressed.

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There seems to be a feeling that the word ‘masculinity’ is somehow against the feminist cause. But it is most importantly what needs to be attacked. What this piece is not is a call of support for the ‘privileged white male’. Instead, it must be understood as proof that in order to kill the shudder that most people feel when those three words are placed side by side, we must attack and interrogate what this category means, empathise with how it has empowered, disempowered and shaped our current political order and identify how we can reshape it to make gendered negotiations more equitable and meaningful for all of the parties involved.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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THE BLOOMING OF SOFT MASCULINITY: FLOWER BOYS AND K-POP

———— Words: Kilau Setanggi Timur

You’ve definitely seen that guy on campus. The one that might be an international student, who’s walking to his class in skinny jeans and a bright, over-sized jumper with a random English word on it. Clothes you wouldn’t be caught dead in. His look is finished off with salon-grade dyed hair and well-maintained skin. You can’t help but give him a second glance before going about your day.

Unfortunately, Australia is dominated by, and still maintains the traditional standards of, hard masculinity.

The ultimate Australian masculinity comes in the form of a white, muscular and rugged heroic figure, who looks like he’s rolled around in the bush for a week straight. Think: Chris Hemsworth or Hugh Jackman (drools).

That guy that you saw with the slightly eccentric fashion is probably part of the ‘soft masculinity’ phenomenon – as coined by Sun Jung, of Melbourne University. This new portrayal of gender is a recent phenomenon, and involves masculinity adopting traits that are usually performed by women.

For instance, many guys who have adopted soft masculinity are seen to be more appearance conscious: taking a liking to fashion, beauty cosmetics, make up and accessories. The favoured personality traits of these men are often more nurturing and sensitive, in contrast to the hyper-aggressive, muscle-flexing masculine personality in the West. This phenomenon has begun to blur the line of what is masculine and feminine, allowing gender to be expressed more fluidly.

To you they might be known as ‘pretty boys’, but in South Korea they are known as ‘flower boys’ or ‘kkotminam’ (꽃미남, kkot = flower; minam = handsome man).

This concept of masculinity can be traced back as far as 10th century Korea, where physically beautiful men were handpicked to be part of

an elite group, known as ‘Hwarangs’ or ‘Flowering Knights’. This ancient boyband was known to wear makeup and accessories and were educated in arts, culture, history, religion and even combat.

The modern origins of soft masculinity emerged in Japanese and Korean popular culture in the 90s, with male celebrities maintaining slim figures and softened features. The beauty of the internet then assisted in the momentum of the ‘Hallyu’ Wave, where Korean pop (K-Pop) spread throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia.

A concoction of washboard abs on slender bodies, beautified with slick fashion and makeup, had become the look of the new male eye candy in Asia.

So why are girls around the world frothing over these flower boys?

The predominant audience for flower boys are women who are willing to spend a large amount of their time and money on popular entertainment. These new concepts of masculinity are embedded within the products coming from the ‘Hallyu’ Wave, including television dramas, music, beauty cosmetics and film.

This has impacted on the lifestyles of its consumers in their expression of masculinity, as well as perception of what women find attractive in a man.

Roald Maliangkay mentions that, over the last decade, this new form of expression has become increasingly popular, specifically in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Southeast Asia.

Macho masculinity has become less appealing to women, as the ‘macho’ personality is less approachable and intimidating. They are too aggressive, and unable to verbally express feelings or emotions. Despite having traits that might make them look dependable, protective and financially supportive, they do not sympathise with women about the social pressures placed upon them. The patriarchal Asian society has pushed women to gravitate towards more sensitive men who are open with their feelings and don’t see or treat women as sexual objects.

Some of the founding flower ‘fathers’ that drove the ‘Hallyu’ Wave include singer/actor Rain, actor Lee Byunghun, and actor Bae Yong-joon. They are typically hunky dudes who were the first to wear make up and present themselves in a softer manner, paving the way for other artists and models to follow suit. A good example of this is the lead singer of the kpop boy group BIGBANG, G-Dragon, who became the first male endorser for red lipstick in 2013. And goddamn, he makes red lipstick look good.

The beautiful faces of these flower boys are plastered on every billboard, window shop, television and cinema screen. Elements of traditional masculinity are still present, within their sharp jawlines and solidly-built frame, but their appearance is then embellished with long wavy hair, light foundation, a good amount of guyliner and eyebrows that are on fleek. Many male celebrities are on beauty and skincare ads to tug the fans heartstrings, getting them to buy the products endorsed. This can also be seen frequently in K-Pop music, as the ‘flower boy’ concept has become an essential part of a boyband’s career.

These are obvious signs of how the music, fashion and beauty industries are aware of their target market. In South Korea it is common that men in advertising are used to show what he would like his ideal girl to use. It’s a big jump from the West, where men only play the role of an admirer of the woman who uses the product.

Nowadays, men that are well groomed and have good fashion sense look like they have their life together, which is all the more attractive for women.

This increased expectation of physical appearance has allowed men to share the burden and social pressures of body image with women. It is no wonder South Korea has the largest capital in plastic surgery than any other country, according to Business Insider. Over the years, procedures for ‘double eyelids’ and rhinoplasty (nose jobs) have increased for women as well as for men, who desire the ‘kkotminam’ aesthetic.

Whether or not it’s your thing, K-Pop is big and is consumed by a

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global audience. The music, beauty and fashion trends that the Hallyu Wave has presented to the world have redefined the male and female image ideals.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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BEAUTIFUL FAILURES: MASCULINITY AND MENTAL HEALTH

———— Words: Bolwen Fu

At the third ANU Mental Health Symposium in early May this year, ANU researcher Vivienne Brown made a presentation where she identified a range of groups within university communities who were susceptible to mental-ill health. Among these at-risk groups, an alarmingly large group was that of males. While a multitude of factors such as socio-economic and international student status certainly intersect to bring about mental-ill health for males, traditional constructs of masculinity are capable of adversely affecting all men. Traditional masculinity is intrinsically tied with our more colloquial understandings of ‘manliness’ – the out-dated notion that men should be stoic in the face of all difficulty, and that showing any vulnerability strips them of their masculinity.

Traditionally, manliness is a construct predicated on conquest, risk-taking and success, all of which are indicators of a man’s sense of control and mastery over his environment. This, in turn, is a measure of a man’s self worth as perceived by himself.

For a man to have

a conversation about his own mental-ill health it means admitting that he does not have mastery over his own problems, and that he therefore concedes ‘defeat’. Seeking and accepting outside help could perhaps also be seen as not being ‘man enough’ to overcome one’s own problems, and this is viewed as a failure of one’s own masculinity.

struggling in some way or another, which in turn can lead to a spiral of further failures and worsening mental health. Traditional masculinity can interfere at many points along the way, including not consulting course convenors or tutors out of a misplaced sense of pride; not seeking help from their residential college’s pastoral care network to avoid ceding

At university, this misguided sense of stoicism can be particularly concerning, especially where it meets with the prominent overachievement and over-commitment culture at the ANU. For some, the ANU is a non-stop proving ground in which many students straddle multiple responsibilities spanning from academia to residents’ committees, societies, student politics, theatre, student media and internships. The problem with seeing it as a proving ground is that in the event of failure, traditional masculinity and manliness hinder a person’s ability to bounce back.

This can happen as a result of not seeking advice from university services already in place for students who are

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a sense of control to their peers; and avoiding the ANU Counselling Centre because of the stigma and misinformation surrounding mental-ill health.

On the more problematic side of things, toxic masculinity and sexist attitudes not only harm their victims, but also the mental health of the perpetrators. By viewing women as lesser people in need of masculine guidance, the perpetrator deprives himself of a wide support network.

He might then find that being out of touch with his own mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, or friends can place an enormous strain on his personal relationships. This can not only give rise to mental-ill health, but also leave a perpetrator without much recourse, because they have marginalised all women in their life who may have been able to offer support.

At an institutional level, there is only so much that can be done to address the intersection between masculinity and mental-ill health. No matter how professional the ANU counsellors are or how much funding the ANU Counselling Centre receives, masculinity will continue to burden those with mental-ill health. It is only through cultural change that these constructs of masculinity can be dismantled. This includes reconceptualising what it means to be masculine to one that is flexible and accepting of deviance to tradition constructs of masculinity. Through doing so, dialogue surrounding mental ill health can begin to flow freely for many more men.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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BODIES ON THE RUNWAY: MODELLING MASCULINITIES

————

The same conversation would happen another two times that day, with two entirely different modelling scouts. The boy-off-thestreet modelling career he fell into led to jobs from fashion school graduate shows, to skate magazines, to Tokyo Fashion Week. Speaking on his Fashion Week fame, he described the food as ‘less good than usual’.

Words: Lauretta Flack

Alistair Graham is a fourth-year ANU student majoring in linguistics and physics, and a strikingly long one at that. Reclining casually into a couch at the School of Music café as we chat, his legs reach out far into the distance and lurk beneath the coffee table. His plans for the future consist, in his words, of making a ‘retreat into a cocoon of academia.’

In the second semester of 2016, Alistair went on exchange to Waseda University in Tokyo. ‘It was fantastic, I loved every second of it. It’s the big city – the biggest. There’s 37 million people in the greater Tokyo area, that’s more people in Tokyo that there is in Australia.’ While the city has much to offer everyone, in terms of dazzling skyscrapers and vibrant urban culture, it had a little more stashed away for him in particular.

‘This was about two weeks after I’d arrived in Japan. I had first travelled south to Osaka, to go to Universal Studios, so this was my first or second time properly walking around in Tokyo. We were in Shibuya Crossing, which is like the big intersection they always show in movies. Maybe 500,000 people cross it every day, probably more. And that’s where all of the modelling scouts go to look for new talent – so, literally someone just approached me and was like “Hey, do you wanna be a model?”’

In any country, talk about the modelling industry raises the spectre of discussion around body image – at least secondarily to the selected best clips of Tyra Banks. For people of all genders alike, ‘idealised’ forms of the body loom over expectations both personal and professional. Alistair said he had done some research into modelling in Australia and been faced directly with these not-so-secret preferences – ‘I look at the websites and it’s like, don’t bother applying if you’re not at least 5’10”, or you’ve got to weigh this much. There’s a very specific type [they’re] looking for.’ In Japan he found this idealised masculinity also very much present, but in a huge industry with a comparably large turnover of faces throughout the season, this meant opportunities for different shapes and sizes to find their niche in the market.

Alistair describes his own physicality as less than traditionally masculine, and usually intentionally so. Achieving that comfort in itself has been a process, which has encountered – though he says only occasionally – moments of resistance. ‘The peak of that for me was when I was living in the United States, in Kansas, that was very Midwestern and very conforming to gender binary and gender roles.

‘So, I’d be asked as a 10 or 11 yearold if I had anorexia because I was so thin. I was also mistaken pretty regularly for a girl, which at the time I was embarrassed by. But, it happened in Japan while I was out at a nightclub, and I was mistaken for a woman – I was like yes, I am about this.

It is amazing what 10 years can do to your perspective.’

In his own experiences, modelling proved itself a validating exercise in terms of physicality and masculinity,

realising that as he had suspected as early as high school, a certain androgynous glamour was something that his body ‘would be good at’. On his favourite job, a friend’s graduate collection showcasing a look ‘combining steampunk and high fashion’, he felt at home in clothes designed for him – rather than a masculine abstraction. ‘It accentuated a lot of the things I enjoy about myself and my own body. The clothes were designed to make me look very long, quite angular and very gender neutral.’

He found, however, in a city with a thirst for fresh faces and often a particular taste for whiteness, it was hard to pass by the differences in who was on either side of the camera. He notes the need to talk about masculinity alongside other social factors including race, as well as queerness and disability. ‘Everyone I was working with – as in all the people doing my hair and makeup, doing the camerawork – literally the entire everyone not on camera, was Japanese. But everyone on camera, was not.’

The nuances of these discussions are greater than diversity that can be rectified in quotas, or even an extremely clever think piece. Nonetheless, he observed with some discomfort that his participation in the Japanese modelling industry continued to connect his white masculinity to images of desirability created for a Japanese audience. Acknowledgements of the connotations of race and masculinity are still few and far between in both Japan and the Western world.

It’s a story that highlights a culture of conversation around masculine bodies that still has some ways to go. ‘It’s important for men or even more so boys to realise, be told, and have reinforced, they don’t have to be like that or look like that,’ he said of discussions about masculine body image. ‘Society places a lot of pressure on men

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and women to look a certain way, and that’s exploited under capitalism to sell products, and that’s also where the desire for male and female ideal models comes from.

‘I think that if there were more representation of bodies outside of that binary it would be quite reassuring to young boys and girls. That like, their bodies are OK.’ Knowing your body is OK; that changes the game. It’s what takes someone who’s not aggressively hirsute, or stacked with muscles, or is for reasons that are numerous doubting that masculinity has space for them – and it puts them on the runway.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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MAN UP, SON

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Words and Illustration: Eben Ejdne Follow Eben on Instagram at @ebenalekzander

Picture the cover of Men’s Health – there is an image of a muscular, incredibly lean man surrounded by garish slogans like ‘GET RIPPED NOW’ or ‘SUPERMAN WORKOUT PLAN’. The image of ‘the man’ is, and has always been, intrinsically linked to his physical appearance.

Ideally, men would want to have a toned body, a strong jaw, broad shoulders and most likely have full facial hair. Biology obviously determines these characteristics but the reason for which they’ve become the epitome of what a man should be is based on tradition, societal values and marketing.

We’re socialised to link masculinity with strength, which translates to several behavioural attributes that males are expected to conform to if they are to be considered the ideal bloke. This notion varies depending culture, of course, but a Western context assumes that men engage in sports like football or rugby, that they aren’t ‘emotional’ and they probably drink beer. This Australian stereotype is typically handed down to a son by his father, and reinforced by his schoolmates. Unfortunately, this tends to exclude those who don’t have this family dynamic or the desire to conform to this stereotype. These young males can be left to hang out with, to the dismay of his burly dad … girls. And in comes a host of issues for the young lad – being called too girly, weird or, even worse, gay.

All these negative connotations are, unsurprisingly, linked with being feminine. To a child, femininity is being interested in things like art, not sport, or crying. Femininity as an adolescent develops to include new attributes like how you dress, or how much you drink or your sexual orientation. If you have the audacity be interested in the arts and wear a scarf, you’ll risk being branded a fag or girl by the football players in your year.

Interestingly, being attracted to the same gender changes how society sees you regarding how ‘manly’ you

are. No matter how much you might fit the mould visually, as long as you have the dreaded ‘gay lisp’ or are actually gay/bisexual, society will instantly associate you with some level of femininity. Because that’s what women do: they’re attracted to men.

Of course, all this information isn’t revolutionary. But the reality is that the public is still inclined to view queer* or non-stereotypically masculine men as feminine. Media, too, shows a sense of discomfort toward those that seem to display traits of both a feminine and masculine character. Personally, I’ve always associated myself with both. I was that typical ‘girly’ boy you had in your year that you thought was annoying but otherwise OK (at least, I hope that’s the worst people thought of me). I obviously copped a bit of abuse about the way I acted and dressed, but the transition into university has forced me, as well as others, to reconsider my self-image. University – where fashion, style and mannerisms are based less on the small group of

people you see every weekday and more on your hobbies and enjoyment – seemed to shift my focus. I’ve grown more confident in myself and my choices and no longer avoid wearing something only because I think that someone might tease me for looking too gay.

But this all asks the question – why does not fitting in with the stereotype make someone worthy of being branded as a social outsider? Even in the gay community itself, there’s enormous negativity towards not exhibiting typically masculine traits.

I think that the phrase ‘masc4masc’ has traversed outside the Grindr-users’ circles and is probably heard by anyone whose friends use the app. It’s an incredibly toxic phrase that equates ‘femmes’ – the Barbra Streisand, Lady Gaga diva-phile that we know well – with being weak, or somehow degrading. Whether the gay men who propagate this phrase believe that their sexuality narrows their suitors to ‘actual men’ or that they are somehow embarrassed to

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be seen with a feminine partner, they are only part of the bigger problem.

It’s both disappointing yet somehow typical that a harmful stereotype is reinforced even within the community it affects.

In all honesty, the way you act – traditional or not – shouldn’t matter. People have so many internalised phobias that affect both how they act and how they see themselves. I once had a bit of a giggle when I overheard a North Shore private school boy say: ‘Yeah, I would wear scarves and gloves, but I don’t want for people to think I swing that way.’ Note, however, that it was objectively cold and approaching Canberra winter, and someone would rather be cold just to avoid an underlying connection between wearing scarves and sucking dick. Of course, your self-image and your view of your reputation are important to a degree.

But, when outdated stereotypes get in the way of wearing a piece of fabric around your neck, something’s got to change.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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MY GET-INTOWHITE HOUSEFREE CARD

———

Words: Lewis Pope

I could write about Donald Trump until I’m orange in the face. Donald Trump is basically the poster boy for a china-shop-bull high on masculinity: he’s impulsive, irrational, aggressive, et cetera, et cetera. In spite of this, he claims his ‘strongest asset … is [his] temperament.’ Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton’s decision-making, you’ve got to concede that her temperament is steely. And yet somehow some ardent Trump supporters think that her menstrual cycle (yes, actually) could lead America to war.

You can point out the irrationalities there forever. You can use Trump as the perfect example of a ‘boys will be boys’ culture. You could also, rather defensibly, argue that it’s disingenuous to use Trump and his supporters as representative of men generally and say that Hillary Clinton is probably more measured and level-headed than most women, by virtue of being one hundred per cent steel. But masculinity in politics is not specifically or exclusively about men, and nor is the corollary telling the whole story.

Political careers and movements can skyrocket or plummet on the basis of perceptions. Prominent leaders in modern politics don’t fall sharply along absolute lines of masculinity and femininity. But the ‘masculine’ bundle of traits often sit more comfortably on the shoulders of a man and can contribute to boosting male careers more easily.

Masculine supremacy – either explicit or implicit – is far from new.

One of the oldest works of fiction, the Iliad, told a story about the unusually strong woman Andromache, whose name derives from the words for ‘man’ and ‘battle’. The origins of masculinity are pretty clear: men were the warriors, the hunters, and typically have a biological advantage for physical strength (notwithstanding the social stigmatisation of muscular women). As the former absolute rulers of most societies, the ideals of decisiveness and boldness fit within that framework.

But, as even Emma Watson realises, masculinity is restrictive and destructive for people of all genders. In Trump’s case, it acted permissively to excuse his litany of alleged criminal behaviours and bullying tendencies – enough for him to be palatable to enough of the country to be elected.

Clinton’s biggest strengths were also her weaknesses, as she struggled to legitimately lay claim to the stern and measured temperament usually the domain of man.

But I said I wouldn’t talk about Trump too much, so let’s pop across the pond to Europe. Marine Le Pen, everyone’s favourite new (and now vanquished) existential threat to the political ruling class, sat at an interesting crossroads. She had to repair the Front’s national public image, reining in the more extreme elements which exist as unhelpful hate channels. That kind of conciliatory move can in part be traced to her portrayal as the bearer of her father’s torch. She continued his tradition of strength and boldness, but with refinement over time and gender.

Le Pen painted herself as a figure like Jeanne d’Arc, the historic French heroine famed for her military achievements and unshakeable fortitude.

Despite being symbolic for the Front National more broadly, Le Pen referenced d’Arc in defending her own dark-toned wardrobe. In a phenomenon similarly witnessed with Julia Gillard, we saw Le Pen subject to questioning on her hair colour, reputation as a party girl, and being a woman who had lost weight to increase her appeal. While people may pose the question of whether these same things would be asked of a man, there is little doubt they wouldn’t be, and no doubt that if they were, the weight given to them would be far reduced. Le Pen’s interaction with political masculinity is a bit of a mixed bag. She enjoys a limited amount of the implicit

strength of character that comes with the image of being the successor to both her strong father and a steely national heroine, while also being freed from some of the more onerous elements of maintaining the visage.

Julia Gillard was also affected by political masculinity, and clearly suffered hugely from misogyny – if you’re going to question that I don’t think there’s much I can do to win you over. The continual implicit and explicit sexist attacks she received damaged her electability in spite of her prodigious parliamentary efficiency. It degraded her perceived ability to wrangle her party and her government, as well as the free trustworthiness bona fides you get for being a male prime minister.

That is not to say that men are only held to account for parts of their character that aren’t referable to masculinity.

Trump had question marks raised about his figure, but never had to seriously grapple with them, despite his medical obesity. Bill Shorten, on the other hand, seems like he has a harder time shaking questions about his weight. The media often seems to deride him while he tries to get in shape

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by devoting full segments to his ‘man boobs’.

Putting aside any political opinions, there’s just something that seems more stable about Turnbull, isn’t there? Malcolm has the money, he always stands up straight, and he emphasises his points with a clenched fist. Bill Shorten goes in for snarky ‘zingers’, was subjected to mocking on pretty classist terms when he copped the ‘sycophant’ roast, and consistently struggles to portray himself in the same cool, calm and collected way.

It’s comparing two men, but there are gendered undertones. The strength and success of one make him seem far more likeable and trustworthy than the social climbing guy with man-boobs. Clearly, there are many biases playing into this, but Malcolm Turnbull sits far more easily into the idealised conception of masculinity.

It’s a hugely complex concept to unravel and speaks to why confrontation of it is so hard and rare. It’s not often that any particular observation about human behaviour can ever be absolutely true. Masculinity is no exception, as is clear from examining many of our leaders. It seems like, as a general rule, traits typically associated with masculinity tend to be traits that will lead to success in politics. The perception and assumption of these traits vest themselves more immediately in our male leaders, and have to be acquired by sacrifice and hard work by women, who enjoy them to a lesser extent.

Masculinity manifests in varied ways: it is more a collection of characteristics than any single or monolithic trait. So often in politics, masculinity is a collection of a series of assumed positives, and freely excused character flaws for men. Meanwhile, everyone else has to fight to prove anything of themselves, and those flaws seem to be assumed at the drop of a hat, or perhaps even an email.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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MAKING IT MORE THAN TOXIC AGGRESSION

———— Words: Tobias Nevile

It wasn’t until I was at university that I came to appreciate toxic masculinity for what it was. I had experienced it throughout my life, but hadn’t thought too much of it – that had just seemed as if it was how boys were ‘meant to be.’ So, I didn’t really questioned the bullying and teasing I saw around me from when I was young, even though it could often be physically violent, gendered or homophobic. I also didn’t really question the standards being imposed on me – that I needed to be strong and powerful and tough, that violence was cool and exciting, that I shouldn’t cry, or express who I was.

I internalised these things, and a lot of my mental state and interior behaviour reflected that; as a teenager, I often struggled to wrestle my desire to be strong with my own feelings of loneliness, pain and vulnerability.

Since being at university, however, my attitudes have changed, thanks to patient friends and the different people I’ve met. I’ve become more comfortable in myself and who I am, and I’ve become much healthier emotionally and mentally. A key part of all of this has been my discovering and understanding what toxic masculinity is, challenging it, and creating a different kind of masculinity that I can be comfortable within. For me, this has meant creating new senses of masculinity and reshaping some existing ones, in a subversion of the old toxic ideas.

Two things that have become increasingly important to my sense of masculinity are the ability to listen and possess gentleness. For me, masculinity needs to be as much about being quiet as much as it does loud and brash, and as much about being gentle as much as it does being strong.

Ideally, I would hope that any kind of character trait can find a place in someone’s own sense of masculinity – since I’ve found that my upbringing has pushed me to strive f o r

strength a n d brashness and unfeeling, I’ve needed to focus on these aspects to bring more balance to my sense of masculinity.

I’ve also found that some forms of traditionally masculine b e haviour can be quite subversive to toxic masculinity, and have found them rewarding in their own way, which was surprising to me. One example of this for me has been through punk and hardcore music – loud, aggressive and intense stuff.

While this sort of music can easily be toxic and violent, and often is, I’ve found there are some bands who defy this norm, like Have Heart, Touche Amore, and La Dispute. This, for me, comes through the subversion of expectations. Rather than using aggression to intimidate, it is used to create safe spaces – the listeners (often men) are able to safely sing, shout-scream, and be emotional without judgement. Instead of cultivating a culture of being apathetic and destructive, the lyrics of songs promote healthy discussion and empathy. And rather than push men into being tough and emotionless, it encourages them to be open about how they feel, to hold hands, to be willing to cry, while not being so progressive that it alienates or scares them. In this way masculinity, even in traditional forms, can be stripped of much of its toxicity, and become a more welcoming and inclusive force.

While my sense of masculinity has changed since I’ve come to university, I’m glad I’ve moved away from toxic masculinity and been able to embrace other parts of who I am. I’m still learning exactly what it means to me, but it’s a journey I’m enjoying and glad to be on.

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Issue 6, Vol. 67

Photography: Dillon Vibes

The athletes in these photos both just competed in one of the biggest races of each of their lives.

At first glance, the difference between these two photos is that the women are embracing each other in tears, whereas the man is sitting expressionless and seemingly emotionless.

This may not come as a surprise.

But if you stop and give this some thought, there is something wrong with these pictures. Men are (wrongly) taught to suppress their emotions.

They’re taught that it isn’t masculine to cry, and that they must look cool and tough at all times. On the other hand, it’s completely acceptable for women to act emotionally and shed tears.

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This inconsistency, rooted in societies expectations of gender difference, is perhaps more apparent in the sporting world than anywhere else.

But when men and women alike are pushing their bodies to the breaking point, dedicating their lives to a physical act, and stopping at nothing to achieve their goals, do they not all have a right to choose emotions from the same palate following victory and defeat?

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(Both photos taken at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials in 2016)

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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EVOLVING MASCULINITIES: A TWO WAY STREET

———— Words: Nick Wyche

Some of my defining memories of adolescence are a series of intense conversations I had with my father.

These conversations seemed spontaneous, but they always happened somewhere beautiful – sitting on the boot of a car in a pine forest, driving through mountains as the night fell, standing at the edge of a cliff as the grey sea washed over the rocks below. When we talked in these places, he broke down the adult world into digestible fragments for me. We discussed sex and relationships, death and life, the different kinds of love, the state of the world. I learned much about him during these moments – he abandoned all pretence and spoke directly and honestly. It was a mark of his respect for me that he wanted to share his hard-won insight.

But all the while, even when we were talking, I was haunted by the knowledge that I struggled to relate to some of what he was saying. I felt I betrayed him by not absorbing his words and applying them to my own life, but I sometimes could not. His view of the world was rooted in his idea of manhood. Many of the thoughts he ventured were coloured and framed by the expectation that one day I would benefit from this knowledge as a man.

Time and again the tropes of men as providers and protectors surfaced, not as a conscious expression of the roles he thought I should play, but in a subtler way – they were

the cornerstones of his worldview.

For a long time, almost past the horizon of memory, his concept of manhood has sat uncomfortably with me.

I’ve comfortably identified as male my whole life, but as I’ve grown up it seems less and less that the eventual destination of my journey is to be a man in that traditional sense of the word. In the classroom, on the sports field, at parties, even on the Internet, I’ve never felt that I belonged in the communities of men that I have encountered.

And yet for the most part, when they are not acting as bastions for harmful and silencing stereotypes of masculinity, these communities are valuable places. They empower men by giving them a network of friends and equals in a society that often shames men who share their emotions. Furthermore, spaces like men’s sheds are vital because they transcend the barriers of age and generational identity. While people of my age are predisposed to listen to messages about mental health and seeking help, many men older than me have experienced a lifetime of socialisation against reaching out in times of trouble.

The opportunity to share these experiences privately can counteract a secret and suffocating aloneness. Several of the older men in my life have told me about moments of breakthrough where they took the plunge and confided in others. They were amazed to discover that the trials they had undergone in isolation were in fact experiences they had in common with their friends and peers.

freer to pursue their preferred careers, hobbies and lifestyles without fear of stigma. Rarely are deep friendships between men subject to the suspicion and innuendo of others – emotional bonds can develop free of the menace of homophobia. Resources and counselling services for men navigating trauma and mental illness are increasingly (if imperfectly) accessible. Our idea of what men can be and do relies less and less on stale concepts of performative masculinity, which in turn allows men broader latitude to define their identities in their own terms.

One of the hallmarks of generational change is the preservation of knowledge that is deemed valuable, accompanied by the discarding of that which is not. I know that my father imparted to me many principles I cherish, such as respect, commitment and pacifism. Conversely, many of the things he told me are less relevant. Many times he talked about marriage, women and gender roles in domestic life: his stories were heartfelt but largely inapplicable to my life as a gay man. My father did an admirable job of transmitting his understanding of manhood to me, and by picking and choosing the insights I wished to absorb I developed my own conception of masculinity.

The problem with this relationship is that this transmission of cultural knowledge is almost never a two-way street: young men rarely choose to discuss their viewpoints with those who first educated them. Men who learned about the world in times of different norms and morals can feel alienated by the messages

I think that as Australia’s cultural discourse evolves, the narratives of masculinity we espouse evolve simultaneously. Now more than ever it is acceptable for men to discuss their insights and feelings. Men a r e

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about manhood that young people propagate. Consistently abandoning them by the wayside of these discussions can leave them reluctant to access the opportunities and freedoms that a more expansive view of masculinity affords.

One of the greatest hurdles I faced when coming out as gay to my father was the fear that in doing so I rejected many of the ideas about manhood that he had bequeathed to me. I worried that because my sexuality fell beyond the pale of his experience, he would feel distant from me. But in fact, just the opposite happened: he told me that he loved me, and that he was receptive to learning more.

When he weathered a crisis shortly after, it took me time to convince him that he was not burdening me by reaching out for support. Both of these times I was humbled by the way my father chose to incorporate my perspectives into his worldview. His responses to alternative ideas about masculinity challenged my preconceptions about intergenerational knowledge-sharing.

Men are human beings, and that fact entails imperfections and weaknesses. Nobody should feel the obligations to retain a masterful façade and suppress their own suffering when faced with challenges. Nor should anyone feel that an unalterable aspect of their identity compromises their masculinity and needs to be atoned for. To people my age these reflections probably seem banal, but for many older men these ideas are radical.

Fundamentally masculinity is about what it means to be a man, and a great wealth of human diversity shows us this can take millions of different forms. It excites me to think that instead of falling outside the scope of previous definitions of manhood, I can push its limits beyond tradition while honouring those of its teachings worth preserving. But at the same time it is selfish and harmful for me to keep to myself the rewards I reap from this process. The evolution of masculinity is an intergenerational dialogue, and it’s my responsibility to talk back.

Culture

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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I (Th)Ink Not The Evolution of Tattoo Culture

Text: Gene Pinter

Late last year, I went to Amsterdam and got my first tattoo.

Sorry, scratch that. Late last year, my parents went to Amsterdam and got their first tattoos.

Trust me, I was just as surprised as you probably are.

All through my childhood, since I could conceptualise ‘rebellion’ and correlate actions with that idea, I said I would get a tattoo. It would be something meaningful, like an acorn – symbolising future strength, or a Celtic knot – in some attempt to prove that my family history was interesting. So, whenever body art was mentioned in the household, I’d take up the mantle of the sole mouthpiece for my generation – as only children are wont to do – and preached of a world full of colourful, accepting people.

My mother and father, a Baby Boomer and Gen X-er respectively, just laughed and said I should be a lawyer. And maybe I should have been – I flatter myself in thinking that perhaps my tirades convinced them to get inked.

It probably wasn’t my influence at all, but a newfound respect for the artistry and the thrill of a previously taboo experience – after all, they grew up believing that tattoos were the marks of criminals and eventual regret. To go from such an instinctive revulsion to actively seeking it out was quite the paradigm shift, something they’ve had to become adept at lately; stripping away the ideals they were raised with in order to keep pace with a modern world full of contradictions. The true blue husband they always planned for me turned out to be a girl

from rural England. The stable job they envisioned for my career became a Bachelor of Arts with shaky prospects. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised: with all the changes they’ve had to face with me, is it any wonder they thought differently about other global oddities?

According to NBC News, the average American millennial has between two and five tattoos. Here in Australia, a recent study by McCrindle says that 30 per cent of young people have been inked and interestingly, 20 per cent of older people with tattoos got theirs after the age of 30. Women are more likely than men to go under the needle: while one fifth of the total population have tatts, a quarter of all women have them. That’s over five million women in this country alone shelling out an average of $100 per tattoo. Considering that only a few generations ago the art was linked to promiscuity and moral deviation, it’s incredible how popular it has become.

Within fifty years, tattoos have gone from the sloppy pin-ups on sailors’ biceps to the chic minimalist geometrics on your favourite barista’s wrist.

Of course, this evolution has been a long time coming. Tattoos have been a part of human history for thousands of years; allegedly since 12,000 BCE. Theories about the origin of the word itself are numerous, but the common consensus is that came from the Tahitian word for marking, ‘tatau’. Through time and

culture, the use and meaning of tattoos has evolved from skill identification in Borneo to indicating social status in the Roman Empire to expressions of family allegiance for the Saxons.

The push against this ancient practice arrived in Europe with the Norman Conquest, and in subsequent centuries the art fell out of popularity in the West. Tattooing came back into fashion with colonisation, as the public were enthralled with the ‘paintings’ adorning the Polynesian people who were brought to Britain by Captain Cook. Over time the association between tattoos and the ‘primitive’ became an unsaid social narrative, leading to the negative perception that was, until recently, widely espoused.

The rise of tattoo culture in the West has no definite genesis, but is rather a culmination of factors: post-war anti-authoritarian sentiments, a growing interest in

‘adopting’ another’s culture to make up for the perceived failings in one’s own, globalisation lending itself to a wider worldview and the creation of the modern celebrity and the desire to emulate them.

What we do know is that for better or worse, tattoos are once again a part of mainstream culture, and that my parents got inked before I did. In Amsterdam, of all places. Damn it, how am I supposed to rebel now? Streak through Coombs?!

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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an encounter with freedom

Culture

The Trouble with Art

Mahalia Crawshaw Text: Felix Ryan

Loud grin Silent laugh Shedding Unfurling wings They fall, a heap at my feet Stepping over them, right foot brushes against a sock, left toe feathers a burden Curiosity boiling in my stomach Steam distorting my sight Anything gushing from between my teeth My mouth to move, whether air, or passion, or mouth My fingers Me Rolling hips, heavy breath Mine, whenever Not now, not yet Just mouths, just hands They always say that there is a lightness But it is more like a guttural shriek Of joy, of being able to open your mouth and scream To feel the ground beneath your feet and not be floating just above The hot coals, the egg shells, all the clichés of hot and soft and delicate Because I’m not delicate anymore My teeth are no longer an army Thoughts no longer a trigger Naked I Stand Here I Am Corsetless Be careful when you return, slithering snakes back around your throat, in your throat A muzzle, a blanket of kind treachery and guilt-tripping care I trip over my clothes to dress, pulling strings to tie my coffin Remember how it feels Soon, you can return

Art, regardless of medium or format, is a uniquely human craft. It encompasses and fuses a multitude of facets from the human condition; rationality and scientific tendencies are often found competing with the subjectivity of experience and sense in most modern artworks. Art makes us think, feel and remind us of the pleasures of being alive and mortal.

Consequently, valuing these compositions is a theoretically and philosophically arduous task. To make an informed and sound valuation, the viewer must consider all aspects of an artwork, including any historical significance and dialectical standpoint it may espouse.

But these are relatively easy to determine with the right equipment, historical knowledge and passion for the arts; the trouble with art at a valuation level emerges when subjectivity is accounted for.

Consider the differing tastes of an art collector and the mother of a young child. To the collector, a masterpiece will be an obvious addition to their collection, but a mother may value her child’s imperfect crayon drawing over seeming artistic perfection. How can we determine the validity of these evaluations? We may argue for the collector due to his knowledge of art history and theory. Conversely, we may deduce that the mother is correct as she truly understands her child’s artistic intent.

The truth is that we are unable to rationally compare people’s preferences in any field of study, be it art, economics or politics. We can certainly tell whether one gains or loses utility in relation to a stimulus, but to say the art dealer benefits from increasing his collection more than the mother from receiving a messy drawing from her child is illogical. We simply cannot say whose opinion holds greater value.

If we can’t evaluate which subjective perspective has greater relevance, then we cannot theoretically attribute a meaningful value to any artwork. Any attempt to do so becomes mired in the forests of subjective understanding and the resultant valuation loses any kind of power to issue cardinal rank. Masterpieces are indistinguishable from crayon drawings by preschool children, stickmen from Picasso and good taste from the bad. Institutions like art galleries lose any kind of legitimacy as subjectivity relegates the concept of art valuation to the impossible. As the art world falls into dissent,

we may potentially lose the ability to describe human experiences and issues in a meaningful way as the criteria for artistic success is replaced by the chaotic schism of individual perception.

Potential solutions do exist for the problem of subjectivity that allow artistic institutions to remain standing. It is true we cannot compare internal order of anyone and rank them on some sort of objective measurement. Rather than despairing or excluding personal preference completely, a balanced and diverse valuation should accept this in their formulas. After all, many other disciplines that include human subjectivity in their machinations – for instance economics, science and philosophy – remain sturdy pillars of human knowledge and art should be no different. We should rejoice that art produces such a myriad of human feelings and thought instead of trying to deduce a hierarchy of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ pieces. Your personal notion of art is a private matter and is both above and separate from the criticism of the wider populous or objective analysis.

The public galleries may be lavish with high performing canvases and well-structured sculptures from an objective, monetary or historical perspective, but they can never be expected to appease the enamelled artistic pleasures of the entire human race. We should start thinking of the objective evaluations of art as but a narrow sampling process, designed only to catch a small element of the human condition for public display. But they can never be used to describe what we display in our own galleries or quantify individual tastes. That is something only you, individually for yourselves, can you do.

Be proud of your subjective toolkit of artistic appraisal, not saddened or worried that it may not conform you do not come to the same conclusion about a certain artwork that a museum or well-read critic did. Art has always been and will continue to be about the unique expression of human emotion and experience, as should the appreciation, enjoyment and valuation at an individual level.

Culture

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Seeing the Unseen: The Artistic Heritage of The Young Pope Text: Louis Pradolin Becker

By the end of the 16th century, the Catholic Church was under siege. The Protestant Reformation threatened to demolish the foundation of Papal authority: the unquestioning obedience of the laity.

The Church fought back with a reminder of that authority with which Protestantism’s bleak, tear-down-the-monasteries brand of introspective piety could not compete – the power, majesty and joy of religious art. A slew of painters and sculptors were patronised by the Roman curia, replacing the once fashionable Classical Idealism with a vivid new aesthetic – a concrete art to stimulate and reinvigorate faith. Among them was Michelangelo Caravaggio, now a regular contender for the title of ‘the greatest artist ever’. With a certain Italian bravado, he sought inspiration in the taverns and brothels of Rome. His Madonna was modelled on a prostitute, his John the Baptist on a tattered Roman street urchin and St Peter looks like the sort of wizened old Italian you might find outside a Melbourne café. The denizens of Caravaggio’s Bible

are not legends or fables or metaphors, but lust and anger, and they suffer before us. After his death, the poet Cavaliere Manino would write about him: Death burned with indignation, Because however many more His scythe would cut down in life, Your brush created even more.

Caravaggio resurrected the characters of the Catholic tradition as people no less real than his audience.

But painting is a limited medium.

Though a genius like Caravaggio can capture the whole history of an event in a single moment, it remains an abbreviation. Painting does not allow the experience of twisting and unfurling individuality that spans a life. To really understand a character, we need to see them change, and change demands time. The more time, the greater the effect. The characters of Hamlet cannot rival those of War and Peace. Those of The Godfather can’t stand up to those of The Wire.

Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope combines a visual potency full of pounding colour and intricate framing inherited from his 16th century countrymen, with the subtlety and patience in character development enabled by television’s temporal scope. The series is built on a conjecture – what if the new Pope were neither an esoteric theologian, like Benedict, nor a tolerant liberal, like Francis, but a virulently fanatical, ruthlessly unpredictable, medieval-style firebrand? It’s a sort of twisted inversion of Dostoevsky’s parable of Jesus’ resurrection during the Inquisition – what if an inquisitor were to come back to today’s Church? What would he do? Like Caravaggio’s paintings, the meandering plot (with all its perplexingly irrelevant tributaries) and setting are a backdrop to what’s really interesting – the emotional and spiritual lives of people for whom Heaven is as much a matter of everyday life as Earth is.

Sorrentino doesn’t flinch in slowly exposing the vulgarity of his subjects; political cunning, hypocrisy, bigotry and pettiness abound, along with vulnerability, lust, shame and fear. Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law) is the paradigm of religious extremism, his foil – the Machiavellian Cardinal Secretary of State Voiello (Silvio Orlando) – one of ruthless utilitarianism.

But cynicism is easy and comforting in its simplicity, and Sorrentino’s real fearlessness lies in representing the world of the devoted as they see it. This is not House of Cards: Vatican Edition.

Pius XIII is as confused and frightened as he is cruel and arrogant a n d

the self-loathing of Voiello is genuine.

Our world, mistrustful of organised religion, will be challenged not by the depiction of religious hypocrisy but of religious sincerity, and the forms that sincerity takes are legion. Each character manifests a unique and painful dialectic between worldly necessity and religious conviction. The Kingdom of God is fused to the kingdom of the Pope – theological dilemmas propel The Young Pope as moral and personal ones might propel another series. When the Italian prime minister brags, with Renzian confidence, about winning 41 per cent of the votes in an election, Pius retorts: ‘Now if you’d care to listen to me, I’ll show you that God exists. And how God and I can annihilate that 41 per cent of the population that makes you feel so cheerful’.

As A.S. Byatt writes, ‘The seen and the unseen world [are] interlocked and interposed. You could trip out of one and into the other at any moment.’ Sorrentino revels in the contradictions and anachronisms that line the border between these two worlds. Caravaggio would dress his figures in the outfits of his contemporaries – Jesus’ capturers, for instance, wear the armour of 16th century knights, not first century Romans. Sorrentino’s Pope Pius XIII smokes cigarettes and drinks cherry coke, he dons his papal gown to LMFAO’s ‘Sexy and I Know it’ and opposite the peasant-prophet Tonino’s shrine to the Virgin Mary is an open MacBook.

Caravaggio’s fusion of the first and 16th centuries was audacious, but there was at least there was a certain spirit in common; Sorrentino’s blending of the Biblical with our own supposedly godless age is a rare and striking dynamic.

Sorrentino and Caravaggio each erect a bridge between the apparently archaic realm of religious mystery, and the rough, dirty, ethically sticky world of their audiences. The artists open up the emotional viscera of people who inhabit both realms, through whom their audiences are bombarded with a bloody, breathing theology. Caravaggio’s works are dazzling moments of inspiration; The Young Pope is a steep and thorny path of unwinding personality. Caravaggio worked to ensure that the Catholic Church’s position as the link between the Apostles and modernity should endure when that connection had become tenuous – Sorrentino stresses the endurance of religious and historical forces in a society that would like to dismiss them as something of the past – not only the intolerant, uncompromising faith of the young pope, but his sincerity and passion as well, which is perhaps more frightening.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Culture

Religion Meets 808’s

how kendrick lamar made spirituality gangsta Text: Ismail Hammoud

‘Kung Fu Kenny’ blessed the hip-hop world once again with his fourth studio album, DAMN., gifting us with a spiritual masterpiece that has religious connotations deeper than its Good Friday release date suggests.

Lamar has a history of introducing albums with sombre, drowned out speech, foreshadowing whatever convention the album seems to follow. DAMN. is no different, opening with ‘Blood.’, a track that combines suspense worthy of Quentin Tarantino with self-critical commentary, the ultimate precedent for the banger that is ‘DNA.’.

Lamar is arguably his best on ‘DNA.’, giving you Compton in its purest form: unhindered, unadulterated BARS; ‘I know murder, conviction. Burners, boosters, burglars, ballers, dead, redemption.’ The track is somewhat satirical, highlighting only the culturally accepted themes that people know Compton California to be, reminiscent of his blatantly ‘street’ lines on ‘Backstreet Freestyle’, ‘pray my d—k get big as the Eiffel tower, so I can f—k the world for 72 hours.’ Away from the ignorance, Kendrick begins his descent into the socio-religious sphere of self-worth on ‘YAH.’, a loop that makes for easy listening. Lamar serves up this placid Kendrick flow as though he is burnt out from his tirade from the previous track. The golden line that sums up the struggle in ‘YAH.’ – ‘My cousin Carl Duckworth said, know my worth, and Deuteronomy say that we all been

cursed’ – is a jab at his own hypocrisy as a sinner that attempts to justify his own worth.

‘Pride.’ is vintage Kendrick, his obsession with switching flows is evident, boasting his colourful schematic palette with a flimsy hook and a justified no-nonsense verse. Attempting to crack the paradox of a perfect world Kendrick explains his lust for imperfection: ‘I don’t love people enough to put my faith in men; I put my faith in these lyrics, hoping I make amends.’ This flailing trust explains his decision to be self-dependent, conveying his faith through his own art: lyrics.

For a great portion of the album, Kendrick provides subtle comments on his relationship with God; in ‘FEAR.’, the commentary synthesises and the relationship becomes vivid. A beat that reeks of west coast nostalgia and Dr. Dre synths, lays the foundation for Kendrick to plea – over the course of four astonishing verses – for an explanation into the severity of his fear: ‘Why God, why God, do I gotta suffer?’ Subverting the optimistic cliché of most rapper’s aspirational relationship with God, Kendrick turns interrogator and adjudicator of the struggles that God places upon him. His fluctuation between sublime piety and nihilism creates a lyrical paradox to the tune of: ‘if I love God and God does not bless me, should I love?’

His previous album To Pimp a Butterfly focused on the national struggle an African American man faces; a protest album vastly different to DAMN. where he centralises his struggle back to his mind, body and soul. To Pimp a Butterfly layered itself with external perspectives,

picking apart the ‘Uncle Sam’ culture of America, which pre-disposed the African American people to the institutionalisation of crime and street adulation.

The raunchy exposé ‘The Blacker the Berry’ paid homage to the civil rights movement that embodied the 1970s, a track laced with references to cultural figures, seemingly paved the way for the follow up album of DAMN. as Lamar himself becomes a cultural icon.

Birth and redemption: Kendrick has created a unique two-fold approach to listening to his album. The fanfare that followed the release of the album anticipated that a follow-up to DAMN. would be released almost immediately; however listening to the album back-tofront would envisage the resurrection of Kendrick. ‘What happens on earth stays on earth, we gon’ put in reverse’ a busty birth’ – Kendrick approaches ‘DUCKWORTH.’ with no frailty, no fear, as though he had already been killed and is ready to descend back to reality.

His Christ-like performance of living through fame, trials and tribulations leverages the theory that Kendrick has inducted himself as the chosen one.

DAMN. is cold hard proof of Kendrick’s ability to mesh the two worlds of gangster rap and spirituality with a unique smoothness and flair. Religion and hiphop are no strangers to each other; rappers such as Kanye West, J Cole and Nas all pay homage to that in their classics.

The subliminal nature of his wordplay opens his work up for interpretation, Lamar invites the listener to read between the lines, and appreciate his liquid verbal gold for what it is really worth.

Seth Sentry Plays It Safe at Transit Text: Ruben Seaton

Seth Sentry has always had the type of fan base that many Australian musicians would envy. Maybe it’s his song content: more often than not, a witty blend of Aussie-adult blues and nerdy pop culture references. Or perhaps it’s his humour, with hit songs that have invariably toed the line between tonguein-cheek satire and cringe-worthy novelty rap. It could just as easily be his image, which has one foot in the ‘Melbourne hipster’ camp and the other with the Aussie lad-rappers.

Whatever the reason, this fan base turned out in force at Canberra’s Transit Bar. The atmosphere was markedly different to his last visit to the capital, where he and Remi put on a stellar show

at the ANU Bar. The bar was tightly packed, dark, and filled with enough five-panel hats to stock up a 2012-era General Pants store.

Despite being an established solo artist, Sentry leant on his DJ and companion, Sizzle, more than ever. The duo are known for their playful onstage banter and rehearsed tidbits; however, with Sentry being out of album cycle and playing to a small crowd, something didn’t quite feel right. It was the first show of the tour, and the normally proficient team looked rusty and apathetic.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t highlights. The red curtain décor on stage made the rapper’s reference to cult TV show Twin Peaks resonate deeper than ever on ‘Vacation’. With the crowd physically so close to Sentry and Sizzle, there was an added sense of intimacy and

personality that their festival slots cannot provide.

Sonically, certain songs gained intensity in the cave-like atmosphere of Transit.

In this context, ‘Hell Boy’s chest-beating braggadocio made the 2015 single seem more than ever like Australia’s answer to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Humble’. ‘Play It Safe’, Sentry’s newest single with which his tour shares a name, employed some interesting crowd interaction to provide some extra originality.

However, in most areas, the duo performed well below their best. DJ Sizzle was unimpressive on the decks, often stopping songs at poorly-judged times for an attempted sing-along. Sentry’s jokes fell flat, most notably when he attempted to compare working in hospitality to the Holocaust. The man who once represented a quirky face in Australian

hip-hop now looked more ordinary than ever. At one point, my friend turned to me and muttered, ‘I think this guy is just a shit Australian Macklemore,’ and went to buy another beer.

The opening track from Sentry’s debut – and best – album, This Was Tomorrow, is ‘Campfire’. The lyrics speak of a semi-dystopian modern world and the dismay of everyday banality. In its chorus are the lyrics ‘Wash, rinse, repeat’ seemingly spat ironically in a desire to break free from conformity. It was sad, therefore, to see a thoroughly washrinse-repeat performance from Seth Sentry in front of a crowd of his most devoted fans.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Culture // Reviews

omgyes Text: Phoebe Hamra

OMGYes is the sex toy you never knew you needed. For anyone who wants to fuck a vagina, whether it’s your own or someone else’s – you will be thanking me as you or your partner screams ‘OMG YES!’ loud enough to wake the neighbours.

The easy navigation of the swanky website foreshadows the ease with which you will be able to navigate the vulva after getting through season one. The short snippets of information in the form of text, videos, diagrams and interactive videos never feel overbearing or like they’re dragging on.

Flick through the 12 episodes that range from information about communication during sex, to actually creating physical pleasure on and around the clit and labia, and the stages of an orgasm.

If you really get down to it, you can make it through the whole season in one

weekend. Maybe post exams for some much needed stress release?

open about pleasure shifted my perspective about my own body image.

I think that to fully appreciate OMGYes you need to approach the information and experience with an open mind and determination. If you really want to learn how to take your orgasms from zero to 100 you need to have patience and be willing to work at it until you figure out if it’s not for you or it’s successful.

OMGYes is not at all like watching porn, so if you’re exploring solo you need time and willpower to make it happen.

Surely such a tastefully designed, interactive vessel of vital knowledge is outrageously expensive, but by some miracle, you too can give earth-shattering orgasms for a one-time payment of $50 for a year. Plus, once you get hooked they’re going to release more seasons on ‘penetration techniques and angles, how pleasure changes after childbirth, … how pleasure changes after menopause,’ and ‘the specifics of pleasure for people who have transitioned!’

That’s not to say that’s the only way to get anything out of the website. It’s also very informative on a much simpler level. Just looking at the different actions and basic techniques can give you much more confidence playing with and providing pleasure to a vulva. Hearing a variety of women talk candidly about sex and pleasure is really comforting and liberating. Although it took me a few tries to watch the videos of women pleasuring themselves, seeing women so at ease with their bodies and so honest and

Although there is already a lot of research out there about male pleasure, I’d like to see OMGYes do a similar season for men, as it’s such a sophisticated and respectful way to appreciate and explore sexuality.

Please, everyone buy this so we can all have amazing sex, all the time.

Rodel Tapaya at the NGA the installation to see the details up close, instead of peering in, from behind a rail.

semblant of Bosch’s nightmarish creatures in The Garden of Earthly Delights than the Mexican muralists’ primary focus on figurative representation.

When I stumbled across Rodel Tapaya’s solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, the installations and paintings showcasing his multiple talents immediately caught my attention. The two rooms offer a thoughtful and impressive treatise on the social and historical complexities of Tapaya’s native Philippines, as well as their reverberations on contemporary life. Tapaya weaves specific folkloric tales into his art, but the strength of the sculpture installations in particular derives from their ability to speak to a wider audience. In much of Tapaya’s work, his scenes show how larger phenomena coalesce to inform interpersonal and individual experiences.

Of Tapaya’s paintings, I found My Way (2016) to be the most intriguing. The loose brushstrokes used to depict the human body in rapid motion is strikingly reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s boxing scenes, yet the scene is very much Tapaya’s. The piece captures the incidents of violence that occurred in karaoke bars with Frank Sinatra’s song, ‘My Way’.

In My Way, the viewer cannot help but think Tapaya is trying to make a point about masculinity, the human predilection for violence, and especially now, how President Rodrigo Duterte has successfully appealed to vigilante justice in his bloody, war on drugs.

For example, the installation Modern Manananggals (2013) is a powerful indictment of the social conditions and poverty that propel millions of Filipinos to other countries in search of work.

Disembodied angels carrying suitcases hang eerily from the ceiling, while their lower halves are firmly planted on the floor. The unresolved visual juxtaposition suggests to the viewer the tensions experienced by economic migrants, whose displacement from their homes and families transform them into beings neither dead nor living. I found this piece incredibly powerful, and only wish that audiences could meander through

Another set of paintings, the triptych The promise land: the moon, the sun, the stars (2016), stretches 10 metres across and commands the viewer’s attention right at the start of the exhibit.

Yet while NGA’s Senior Curator Jaklyn Babington draws comparisons with the Mexican muralists and Frida Kahlo, I found Hieronymous Bosch to be a more apt comparison. While Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera often worked to propel their own political agendas through art, Tapaya captures scenes that provoke the audience to reflect and think critically. In addition, the fantastical nature of Tapaya’s triptych is more

While the scale of the work is indeed impressive, I could not help but think that Tapaya was overly ambitious in this NGA-commissioned piece. There is no doubt concerning Tapaya’s skills, but with every nook and cranny filled with coded imagery and symbolism, the omission of negative space creates a more collaged thicket of images rather than a sweeping visual narrative. In the work of Bosch and the Mexican muralists’ work – whether it be in José Clemente Orozco, David Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros’ murals, and even in Frida Kahlo’s surrealism – there is a strategic use of negative space that is not present in Tapaya’s overcrowded triptych. In contrast, most of Tapaya’s smaller works employ a more liberal use of space that allows for greater dynamism between characters.

Text: Diana Tung

As Tapaya’s work continues to evolve, I’ll be keenly following his artistic trajectory as well as his creative social critiques.

In the meantime, I can only hope that the NGA will continue to support diverse young artists like Tapaya to enrich the cultural and political perspectives of its visitors.

Rodel Tapaya: New art from the Philippines is on display until August 20, 2017. Entry is free.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Culture // Reviews

Review: Idaho to comment on the recently published book, telling me she’d just finished it on her lunch break, having been unable to put it down. Starting the book, I thought I could see glimpses of why. Within the first chapter, I was swept into the aftermath of a seemingly inexplicable murder. As I read, Idaho unravelled the complexities of the crime and ultimately explained what could lead someone to such an unthinkable act.

Text: Victoria Fay I picked up a copy of Emily Ruskovich’s debut novel Idaho on a whim from the small bookshop in my childhood town.

The lady who sold it to me was quick

Idaho is certainly not a plot-boiler. The novel’s fragmented chapters jump across multiple perspectives and time periods between the 1970s and 2025. Rusovich’s writing seems less concerned with producing a cohesive narrative, and more with a deep exploration of memory and trauma. The dreamy, rural area of the eponymous American state is a landscape totally conducive to these themes.

The isolation of its small cast of characters means that most of the novel is a richly written introspective account of the lives surrounding the central murder. Dialogue is sparse, with tension frequently expressed subliminally between characters. With all of these elements established early in the novel, it

quickly became clear that Idaho was not the snappy murder mystery I was expecting. With so much of Idaho taking place inside the minds of its inhabitants, the novel is slow going in places. What keeps the work engaging is Ruskovich’s spare, yet evocative writing.

Despite its intensely literary style, Idaho never becomes self-indulgent, or descends into overly florid language.

Ruskovich does not write in a convoluted fashion, but her sparse language is highly symbolic – the meanings behind short sentences almost always transcend the literal. This simple style conveys the utter bleakness of the lives of her characters. Although it would be hard to describe any of them as likeable, her portrayal of lives wracked by utter sorrow is startlingly realistic. The pain of the events leading up to, and proceeding the central murder is at times almost overwhelming, a testament to Ruskovich’s abilities as a writer.

matter and unconventional writing style. Despite this, the author’s incredibly transfixing writing makes the read utterly worth these trials. It’s hard to imagine this story of tragedy being written in any other way. The fact that this is Ruskovich’s debut novel makes the work all the more impressive. As long as you are not expecting a novel of neat ends, I would highly recommend Idaho.

I still cannot agree with the lady who sold me Idaho that the novel is impossible to put down. Ruskovich’s novel is gruelling, in its distressing subject

Contribute to Woroni!

Send articles, stories and ideas to write@ woroni. com.au

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Culture // Life & Style

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How to Quit While You’re Still Ahead Text: Joyce Zhang

The demands of fake smiles, endless platitudes, and other ridiculous requests that come from the pits of despair that capitalism and humanity are, will be familiar to many of us. I myself spent a long and painful summer dusting bags (I’m not even kidding) and waxing lyrical nonsense about stylistic merits and versatile functionality at Australia’s oldest and leading women’s fashion retailer™. Every retail job begins in roughly the same way: you arrive excited in your smart-ish all-black uniform, or in whatever trendy gladrags you’ve managed to scrounge up on your spending allowance. The first day flies by in the nervous flutter of newness. Are you greeting customers too awkwardly? Do the seams on your folded pants/shirt align correctly?

How does the cash register work? How do you process a refund?

Soon however, you acquire the haggard weary cynicism of a retail veteran.

Marked by the perma-smile fixed on your face, and your very own trademark ‘retail-voice’. You wince only slightly near the tail end of an eight-hour shift as an unassuming mother-daughter duo slip in past the semi-closed glass door only to begin a slow and lengthy perusal of inventory five minutes out from closing.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 20.8 per cent of students experienced some capacity of employment as sales assistants during the course of their degree. But when does the payoff of disposable income in exchange for barely-skilled labour start to suck more than it’s worth? The following are a series of questions you should ask yourself in order to gauge whether your job does, in fact, suck more than it is worth.

Personality Do you hate people?

Are you an introvert?

If you answered yes to either of these, then why the flying heck are you working in retail? Perhaps consider a side-hustle in a less egregiously inter-personal vocation. If you’ve managed to make it into the hallowed concrete halls of ANU, you should be able to convince some unsuspecting parent of a failing high-schooler to let you tutor them in something — a

job which requires no: ‘That looks inCRED-ible on you … and would be even better with the matching earrings’, but only: ‘Dude, that is definitely not how you do a quadratic equation.’

Pay Are you getting paid your minimum legal entitlement?

If you answered no to the above it may be worth considering whether your employer is intentionally ripping you off, in which case your first point of call would be to initiate a discussion armed with all/any relevant legislation which could help your case. Feigning initial confusion to avoid direct confrontation always helps. i.e.: You: ‘What award does my employment fall under?’

Boss dude: ‘… General Retail Industry Award [most likely]’ And that’s when you hit them with: ‘I’ve double checked with the Fairwork ombudsman and it specifies that according to that award I should be paid _____, but I am currently being paid_____.’

If you’re working for a massive chainstore corporation, you will mostly be dealing with a long chain of middle managers who are probably not personally out to get you – though nor do they have the power to change your rate of pay if underpayment is a company-wide issue. If underpaying you is an honest mistake (which does happen more frequently than most of us realise due to the nature of casual employment payslip irregularity and the complexities of casual loading), this will be corrected with relative immediacy. If it is a result of the latter – purposeful and exploitative underpaying – you could bring the employer to the fair work commission. This is, however, a tedious, lengthy and not to mention expensive process.

Drama Do you hate your boss? Do you hate more than one of your co-workers?

Are the customers so aggressive in their demands of your abilities as a lowly shop

assistant that you feel the urge to commit grievous bodily harm to yourself or others on a regular basis?

If you answered yes to more than one of the above, it might be time to get the heck out of that hellhole.

At the end of the day, I know it’s a rough subject because, let’s be real, most of us stick it out at these jobs because we actually need them to survive. But if you feel like talking to people is just not for you, you’re not getting paid what you deserve, or your manager is just a major [insert expletive of personal preference here], then you owe it to yourself to at least start looking down other avenues, rather than just copping it. You can always make an appointment to have a chat with someone at the Careers and Student Experience Department and they can help you to polish up that resume, hone your interviewing skills, and source a new workplace ASAP.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Culture // Life & Style

Yashi Compares

Documentaries Text: Yashi Kotnala Yashi is undertaking a double degree in International Relations/ Environmental Studies and hails from Western Sydney. Her column is like a Yelp review for things that aren’t restaurants and instead of useful information, it’s incoherent rambinling for 800 words and she doesn’t even get promoted to ‘Top Contributor’ status.

On most nights before turning in, my partner and I will attempt to watch one short episode of a TV series to wind down for the night. It’s a little reward for, in his case being, and in my case attempting to be, productive. After countless nights facing the same issue, here is basically how every conversation goes: Partner: Bed? Me: Agreed.

P: Netflix?

M: Agreed.

P: What do you feel like watching?

M: I’ll know when I see it.

P: Um ok. How about ‘Because you watched The Chefs Table ... British TV shows? Goofy TV shows? Maybe something in Oddballs & Outcasts?’

M: I don’t know, but now I’m confused and tired so I’m going to bed.

Sometimes, to give the illusion we’re actually getting somewhere, I’ll throw in a ‘oh, I’ve heard that’s really good’ or an ‘I’m not feeling like it tonight, but we definitely need to watch that at some point’. On special occasions, I like to sprinkle in some ‘okay let’s put that on our shortlist and if we can’t find anything better, we’ll start on that’, knowing full well that we will never ‘start’ on anything.

Many weeks ago, in my pursuit to find a half decent show to watch before bed, I decided to undertake a research project that, unbeknownst to me, would eventually lead to the next stage of human evolution. With a determination to procrastinate beyond all those before me, I have found the genre that stands out among the rest.

My friends, the future of bedtime show watching lies not in goofy mockumentaries (no shade Parks & Rec, you still my all time fave), but in full fledged, honest to God, documentaries.

Get your jammies on, cocoon yourself in the warmth of a Big W duvet, and forget everything you thought you knew about going to bed. I am about to share with you the two of the greatest documentaries to grace this Earth.

Number Two: Chef’s Table From the streets of New York to the southern-most provinces of South Korea, Chef’s Table showcases leaders of the world gastronomy scene. These chefs

push the boundaries of what ‘good’ food should be, what it should look like, where it should come from, and why we should consume it.

The team behind the show is phenomenal. They not only capture the artistry of the food, but the electricity within the restaurant kitchen, and the creative energy of the star chef. Somehow, they weave it into such a captivating story – it makes me not want to eat food that hasn’t had an hour long documentary made about it. The actual cinematography is also fantastic. I have never seen food in such high definition, and I have eyeballs.

Most episodes follow the same story arch, which can get quite repetitive if you binge watch the series, but also you shouldn’t do that: show some self-restraint.

My personal favourites from each season: In season one, ‘Massimo Bottura’ and ‘Francis Mallman’, in season two: ‘Alex Atala’ and ‘Ana Ros’, and in season three: ‘Jeong Kwan’ and ‘Virgilio Martinez’.

Number One: Life Off Grid This is a film that documents the successes and challenges of living completely off the grid. By harnessing renewable energy and utilising local natural resources, hundreds of Canadian citizens have managed to completely disconnect themselves from the national grid and live close to 100 per cent self-sufficient lives.

There’s a man that’s so guilt ridden about ‘frivolously’ wasting his stored energy on watching television for one night of the week, he rides an exercise bike in his house to grind flour at the same time.

How did that sentence even come into existence? I don’t have the answers for you, but I can tell you that this man is real and he actually does that. It’s been documented and it’s glorious.

As one woman describes it as a way of living that guarantees you ‘your own home rather than a mortgage’. Her house is made of tyres. Another interviewee’s house in the far reaches of British Columbia is made entirely of Cob – a clay, sand, water and straw mixture – that cost him around $1000. So, essentially, if

you refrain from eating just under 350 avocadoes, you’ve got yourself a house.

Also, Canada, you are beautiful. Like, wow. Holy moly. I don’t know why people waste their money on the United States.

Other documentaries that take my fancy This isn’t a particularly extensive list so some honourable mentions include Planet Earth, most ‘Louis from the BBC’ films, and of course, Grand Designs UK (especially the revisited series). Kevin McLoud is a hunk and anyone that says otherwise is a liar and shouldn’t be trusted.

Enjoy watching dear friends, I hope I have opened your eyes to a world outside of sitcoms and British period drama.

Culture // Life & Style

Issue 6, Vol. 67

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Regular Column

Dear Woroni: Why Does it Feel like We Live in an Age of Anxiety?

Text: Mary-Anne Nolan

In short, it’s because we do. Although, I must take care to point out that I’m not talking about the permeating and prevalent problem that is mental health.

I’m talking about an anxiety epidemic amongst millennials Re: Our Futures (capitals intentional because, well, it’s a big fkn deal okay).

For our entire lives we have been painted as the luckiest, most educated, and most prosperous generation to ever grace the earth. Arguably, the age of the internet and increased education has meant that opportunities for success are presented to most of us on a gold platters that simply weren’t being passed around in the pre-2000s. Think careers on Youtube, the ability to make a living as an Instagram influencer, the fact that with one click of a button we can form connections with future employers on Linkedin etc. This should be a good thing though, right?

Well, not exactly. This privilege comes at a cost – our identity. It’s ironic really; too much freedom can actually become overwhelming and serve to restrict us.

Us millennials seem to be facing an identity crisis. A series of cascading questions serve to haunt and debilitate us: What next? What career path should I pursue? Who am I? What’s my purpose? When will these dreams of mine come to life?

Although these questions are painfully cliche, they represent an identity crisis pandemic that is so much more than a just reflection of the new technology age we live in – it is an anxious cry for help.

Markedly, recent studies by psychologists have indicated that many millennials are actually facing quarter life crises.

Bearing all the hallmarks of the notorious ‘mid-life crisis’, this phenomenon adequately sums up the feelings of desperation, insecurity, anxiety and loneliness that so many of us sometimes face.

Mainstream media carries around our golden platter of ‘dreams’, of the perfect lives that seem so almost tangible ... if we work hard enough.

This ‘dream’ is championed by commercial advertisements that sell a picture of achievable great-looks, expensive cars and high-ceilinged apartments, all aimed at millennials. They tell us to ‘create first, question later’ and to ‘Make.

Inspire. Do’. We are so aware of all these things – both tangible material products, and intangibile, immaterial ideals, values and life trajectories – we are supposed to have, but in some sort of huge irony-ridder contradiction, the very

possibility of these aspirations coming to life has been robbed from us. The rising price of the housing market, limited job opportunities and the cost of living day-by-day all exist in stark contrast to the idea of us getting that grad job, eventually buying a family home, and going out for brunch along the way with our stylish significant-other and Cavoodle in-tow that is fed to us on our golden platter. This imposes a lot of pressure on us, and leads to much unrecognised and stagnant anxiety amongst millennials.

To make the problem worse, exposure to the life we ‘could have’ on social media serves to heighten these feelings of anxiousness. We are always striving for something bigger, better and brighter, our lives always appearing as dull in comparison to others. Social media appears to be our kryptonite. It is no surprise that a correlation between the rise of social media comes hand in hand with this new anxiety ridden ‘quarter-life crisis’ phenomenon.

Personally, I find myself using self-gratification as a relief. Splurging on expensive cocktail nights, designer clothing and unnecessary uber rides provides me with a superficial feeling of satisfaction with my life. I believe I am living my own dream. However, my priorities are completely warped. In order to sustain a lifestyle like this, I also need to work hard at uni and get good grades. My fear of failure – to get that grad job, earn enough that I can live off, and enjoy life while doing it – has seen me adopt the lifestyle of a hedonist. I emulate an ethical system in which immediate pleasure ranks as the highest form of good. At least when I live this way I can temporarily continue to avoid answering the questions I mentioned above. But, in itself, this lifestyle exists as my greatest source of anxiety.

So what next? Outlined below is some help (obviously sourced from the internet, because what the hell do I know – I’m a serial spender who silences stresses by swiping a credit card) on how to overcome your anxious tendencies and work towards getting over your quarter life crisis;

1. Stop comparing yourself.

This is stating the obvious, and we all know it, but seriously, spending valuable time comparing yourself to someone else’s successes and downfalls, unsurprisingly, does nothing to help you get where you want. The more you start focussing on your life, the more of a chance you having in finding out what you want.

2. Don’t live by a ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ attitude.

A life reminiscing on regrets is just painful. If you don’t know the famous poem

by Robert Frost ‘The Road not Taken’, look it up pronto. It gives a pretty accurate representation of life’s choices, and he makes a fair point in saying that there is no point looking back because the choices you have make are yours and ‘make all the difference’ for the future.

Own them.

3. Talk to Someone Again obvious, but if you’re feeling a bit lost no harm can come from telling a friend. They are probably feeling the same as you.

So, there you have it, some advice on how to overcome a quarter-life crisis from someone in the midst of a quarter-life crisis. Not very convincing? Well, I guess the other way you can look at it is, at least we’re not shelling out for Harley Davidsons or having an affair with Michelle from the office who wears way too much chemist-bought perfume, and still uses the term ‘hip’ in a non-ironic way. Does that make you feel better?

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

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Culture // Life & Style

Which abandoned ANU shopping trolley are you?

Text: Liv Ireland

Have you ever felt like part of you is missing? A giant gaping hole inside, just yearning to be filled? Well, your time has arrived. Forget about ‘gap yahs’, road trips and hipster coffee shops, taking this quiz will help you truly find yourself.

When faced with a challenge, you… a) Race at it, determined to complete it to the best of your ability, yet slowly lose motivation as time passes. b) Decide to think outside the box and solve it differently to the ‘norm’. c) Are in a constant state of confusion. d) Don’t believe in challenges, prefer to live in the moment.

If you had to choose a spirit animal, that would be … a) A sloth. b) A duck. c) Doge meme. d) Jumping baby goat.

It’s week 12 … a) Time to copy that note structure you prepared in week one. b) Take an unnecessary amount of time to immerse yourself in nature, so you can be more ‘productive’ when you get back to study. c) Desperately try to find textbooks you haven’t seen in a while. d) Thursday night pub crawl anyone?

Current living conditions? a) A Lodge resi with a goal to progress beyond pasta every night. b) Obsessed with college pride, creating new traditions, communal cooking recipes and running 100km in the middle of the bush. c) In limbo – still struggling to find a share house due to Canberra’s overpriced rent. d) Relying on your college bar for cheap alcohol that appears classier than Little Fat Lamb.

Favourite place on campus? a) The library: Make sure everyone knows you study and that you love to do so. b) Sullies: Whilst it contains some rather feral specimens, there’s an aspect of beauty and curiosity to it. c) Union Court: Easiest place to get to, with the most likely chance you’ll bump into someone you know, who can help you out with your current crisis. d) Fellows Oval: Makes the trip to and from Thursday night antics much easier.

How do you feel when asked: ‘What do you want to do after uni?’ a) Fine: You have a perfect plan that impresses real adults, yet you seriously doubt you’ll succeed in that career. b) Frustrated: Why must we always follow a societal expectation and instead just live in the moment and let life whisk us along. c) ‘Stop putting all this pressure on me mum!’ d) Make something up.

What’s your area of study? a) Something you thought would be impressively difficult and challenging, such as law, science or engineering. b) The most indie possible combination (think: art curatorship and computer science). c) Not too sure anymore, as you’ve changed so often. d) Something with the most minimal contact hours and study necessary.

What’s your coffee order? a) Whatever gives you the best hit – you’re desperate to replicate that week three energy. b) A large, 2¾ shot latte, with minimal froth goats milk and a leaf-shaped caramel syrup design on top. c) Whatever the person you’re with is having. d) A mocha – need some extra sugar to help relieve that hangover.

Favourite ANU Facebook page: a) ANUSA: You must be featured at least monthly, so everyone thinks you’re super involved. b) ANU Stalkerspace: Shit stirring is your forté. c) New@ANU: Questions you have now are often found in January posts before uni began. d) ANU Crushes: You’re tagged on a weekly basis.

‘Why would you move to Canberra?’ a) Directly quoting from ANU’s website: ‘ANU is a world leading university that is ranked first in Australia …’ b) Very few of your friends from back home came here, and you always sound the most niche when comparing university choices with others. c) You thought it would be a good idea to experience a new city while also holding onto the hope it would improve your sense of direction and belonging. d) Cheaper alcohol than most other cities.

Mostly As – Abandoned outside of Residential buildings At the beginning of semester, you had a burst of productivity. Socially, academically and physically. You were playing ultimate frisbee, writing notes straight after lectures, all whilst nailing those moves at Mooseheads. Like this shopping trolley, at the beginning, all groceries were efficiently carried, each food type appropriately placed in different corners. Somehow though, that perfectly efficient trolley always ends up lazily left outside of where you live. The inability for you to commit to the trip back to Civic reflects your inability to sustain your commitment to university life all the way through semester. The perfect ‘fresh new start’ is often abandoned by week five.

Mostly Bs – Sullies Creek An oddball, you tend to be the rogue one in your friendship group. You have a passion for being ‘cool’ with your strange ways. You devise the most cooked methods of having fun and tend to love the wilderness, often being known as the greenie of the group. Individualism is of absolute necessity when it comes to anything you do. Conforming to the norm is a weakness and boring, which is why you hang out in the strangest of places.

Mostly Cs – Lost outside of lecture halls It’s week nine, yet you still can’t work out the death trap of Coombs, or whether your lecture was at 2pm or 3pm. You’re renowned for looking lost around Union Court, often using that as a base to help compensate for your shocking navigation skills. You’re desperately clutching onto your phone with the Lost On Campus app open, pretending you’re simply texting someone instead of using a map this late in semester. Yet, despite all your efforts, whether it being asking fellow residents for directions or listening to Google Maps in your headphones, you still manage to appear lost.

Mostly Ds – Bar night transportation You’re a giver. Piggy backs, Macca’s runs and late nights; you’re the club rat with the gift that keeps on giving. You’re unlike any other partier, because you ALWAYS come up with genius ideas that lead to a wild night. Whether it be carrying someone all the way to Mooseheads or rolling down Daley Road with a friend at 2am, you’re the person that people rely on for a good time. Consistent and committed, you never let them down, you’re always going to be out on a Thursday and know how to make the night a memorable one.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Culture // Life & Style

46

Doing You

The Unfortunate and Limited Finality of Orgasms Text: Phoebe Hamra Forest’s mom always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’ I say, ‘Sex is like ice cream.

There’s something for everyone.

Evolutionarily speaking, goal-orientated sex is probably the sex we are programmed to have. It releases all the lovely endorphins that make you want to do it again and is the most efficient for reproductive purposes. Fortunately, we humans are capable of experiencing so much more. Sex with a partner is as much about feeling intimacy and human connection as physical friction.

Sharing your body with another human can be such a binding and consuming experience and being able to give them pleasure and receive it yourself is more intensely and deeply fulfilling than any orgasm.

For many people who can’t experience orgasm with a partner or even by themselves, this doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy the other pleasures and connections that sex offers. This is something that people who are new to or shy about sex may not really understand, especially when sex in mainstream media usually consists of a few thrusts and a head toss.

This realisation that sex does not equal orgasm is comforting and liberating. It opens up a fresh and limitless way to enjoy sexual pleasure with yourself and partners without the looming pressure and potential failure that accompanies the perceived necessity of an orgasm.

That said, orgasms are still pretty amazing – especially the kind that pull you so deep into them you forget about everything else. Studies vary on the typical length of an orgasm, but it seems that women usually last longer than men, something many men are pretty jealous of but don’t have to be. If you’re looking to have more, or better orgasms, there are things you can do. Spending time by yourself or with a partner exploring what feels the best, setting up the right mood and getting to the edge of an orgasm then staving off can make your orgasms much more intense. Training your body and mind with this teasing method (and kegels, lots of kegels) can wildly improve your orgasms. It can also give you more control over when you orgasm – and reaching orgasm at the same time as your partner is insanely hot. As much as Cosmo and Men’s Health can guide your practice, there are an abundance of more scientific and detailed guides out there like OMG Yes!. Don’t underestimate published literature on the subject.

You might feel a hidden disappointment when a partner nods off to sleep or complains of hand cramps trying to finish you off after you blessed them with an orgasm. Accepting this as normal makes orgasms into a chore, not to mention dramatically reduces the chances of getting there and the quality of any eventual release. In some cases you need to take responsibility for your own orgasm: tell your partner that you want to orgasm and help them help you to get there. Guide their touch or DIY while they massage you and whisper sweet (or dirty) thoughts into your ear. It can feel like a selfish thing to explicitly ask for what you want during sex but remember that your partner wants you to enjoy yourself, and taking control of your sexuality and pleasure is definitely sexy.

It’s been disappointing both when a friend came to me concerned that her boyfriend couldn’t ‘make’ her orgasm, thinking that’s all that sex is and when another brags about how often she squirts, and is surprised when no one she knows has shared that experience. It highlights the inherent judgement and competition that dominates how we talk about orgasms as incredibly exclusive and limiting. This discourse forces us to either assume that how we orgasm is either normal or weird – due largely to a lack of information and dialogue about the realities of it. These assumptions put unnecessary and uncalled-for pressure on orgasms which, unsurprisingly, is a huge mood killer. It is unbelievable

to me that we sabotage something that gives us pleasure and makes us happy.

An unfortunate trope of the human condition, it seems.

The orgasm is what makes sex impressive; it’s the implied success of achieving one that we brag about to our friends.

But this whole way of thinking is such an inaccurate representation of real sex and needs to shift to make sex a more egalitarian endeavour. Sex is not a competition; it is something present that should be cultivated both in activity and attitude.

47

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Your Guide to

Culture // Life & Style

Canberra’s Best Study Cafes Text: Sara Gillespie

Studying can be difficult at the best of times but if you don’t have the right environment for your needs, it becomes near impossible. Whether the silence of a library or the bustle of a café is what you need, finding that one place you’re most productive is the key to making it through university. I took on the task of hunting for the most study-conducive café in the Canberra region, reviewing a range of cafes and judging them on comfort, noise pollution, location, wifi-access and the ever-important quality of coffee, to find that one key place.

Home game performance usually beats away games, but the same cannot be said for ANU’s cafes. With the closure of Degree, Pajenkas has been over-run with students who never knew it existed until they had to find their pre-lecture coffee fix elsewhere. On the plus side, no matter what food you buy, the servings are enough to sustain you for days which means it’s really cost effective to go with some friends and study over a shared bowl of gravy-soaked chips. If you’re in the mood for coffee though, Pajenkas is not for you. Not only is the coffee cold by the time you collect your food, but it induces the type of body shiver a nonwine drinker gets from a glass of red.

Seating is not a selling point, although the covered outdoor seating area is great for soaking in the sun’s warmth with the impending winter chill.

Keeping it in the family, Gods was next on my list. Understandably, cafes are loud; there’s noise from the coffee machines, knock buckets, the dinging of bells when food is ready to make its way to the customer, and the typical white noise of chit chat. Somehow, the conversations in Gods café are closer to black than white noise. Maybe café-goers are particularly extroverted in Gods, or maybe there’s residual noise from the attached building, but I have never

been so thankful for noise-cancelling headphones until I stepped foot in this establishment. If you’re looking for a hipster-style café closer to campus than Londsdale Street, Gods is your place – the wallpaper alone would keep you distracted for hours. But, if you need to concentrate, it’s best to avoid looking anywhere inside. Caffeine quality isn’t too bad, but you better not be in a hurry because you’ll be waiting a while to get served, let alone get your coffee. The range of food on offer is a highlight however, with plenty of gluten free options available and decent serving sizes.

Koko Black in the city centre, or Oliver Brown in Gungahlin are decent places to study, with an endless supply of chocolate, minimal amount of noise and comfortable chairs. Taking a deep mouthful of steaming hot chocolate, insulated by the melted layer of marshmallow gives you just the revitalisation you need after an intense study effort. The coffee is decent, but why would you order a plain coffee when you have the option of chocolate-infused coffee? Needless to say, if you’re diabetic or lactose-intolerant, this isn’t your place.

Bringing it a little closer to home, Biginelli’s in the CBE was the next café I hit.

For someone as dependent on coffee as I am, Biginelli’s is the place to be. Not only are the baristas really friendly, but they give you cheaper coffee in exchange for thinking sustainably and bringing your own coffee cup. Now that the outdoor area is open for business, you have the option of picnic-style outdoor settings, or indoor tables decorated with all the sugar you could dream of and an IKEA plant for aesthetic. Having spent many consecutive hours in these very tables, I can attest to the productivity of the CBE building. But, if you’re one for quiet I’d avoid the building from 9-5. The smell of freshly brewed coffee is amazing, but the sound of it for hours on end is not music to the ears.

High-5 in Belconnen is a great place to study if you need a break from

campus. Located in the quiet end of Westfield shopping centre, the noise from high-trafficked areas is lost by the time it reaches you. The booths give you that American-diner feeling, with Australian quality coffee, and the banana bread isn’t too bad. Westfield’s wifi is capped at 3 hours, but if you stayed for more than 3 hours you’d be buzzing from all the caffeine and you wouldn’t be able to study anyway.

With countless cafes in Canberra, everyone is sure to have their own preference; but after reviewing a few from various locations, I have to say I’ve definitely found my top contenders. Biginelli’s in CBE reigns supreme for campus coffee and atmosphere, but for squeezing in some retail therapy amongst the study, High-5 is the place to be. In preparation for the cold months to come, why not plan your own café-hunt through Canberra’s goldmine of too-hipster-fortheir-own-good cafes to find your own study haven?

Learn // Environment

Issue 6, Vol. 67

48

Solar Highway: The ACT’s renewable energy journey Text: Lottie Twyford

If you’ve recently confused driving Canberra’s Monaro Highway or Majura Parkway with a scene from a dystopian film, you’re probably not alone. However, the answer to what exactly these alien looking installations actually are is much less sinister than any current Atwood-esque interpretation would lead us to believe.

What they are, in fact, is part of the ACT Government’s aim to meet Australia’s most ambitious renewable energy target – 100 per cent renewable by 2020. Significant legislation has also been passed with the aim of achieving zero net carbon emissions across the Territory by 2050. With the recent instalments of the Williamsdale and Mugga Lane solar farms, the 50 kilometre stretch of road from Majura Parkway to the Monaro Highway dubbed the ‘solar highway’, now houses more than 174,000 solar panels.

With four solar farms now located at Royalla, Mount Majura, Mugga Lane and Williamsdale, the ACT looks in good stead to meet its target. The combined megawatt (MW) energy generated from these farms will provide enough energy to power 11,700 ACT homes.

To maximise energy consumption, the panels at Mt Majura, Mugga Lane and Williamsdale all rotate throughout the day. Interestingly, the Mount Majura farm is actually owned by SolarShare Community local investors, who reap financial rewards while also contributing to Canberra’s clean energy future.

This is happening amidst the global trend of giving increasing weight to the arguments of climate change deniers.

As the US President seriously considers withdrawing from the Pa r is

agreement, and our own Federal Government seems unwilling to commit to any real action to combat climate change – little old ACT is bucking the international political trend by committing to its 100 per cent goal.

Aided by the massive investment push

by Germany, the US and China; the renewable sector is the fastest growing energy sector globally. In many areas of the world, outdated political rhetoric is losing ground to overwhelming scientific consensus and the power of clean energy to create jobs and economic growth.

Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability Shane Rattenbury notes that ‘Canberra is a becoming a hub for renewable energy research and innovation, creating new jobs, driving investment to the ACT and region and stimulating our economy.’

So, why is renewable energy stalling nationally?

Considering the country’s considerable capacity for renewable energy generation – 500 times greater than current power generation – it is surprising, to say the least, that in 2014, investment dropped by 70 per cent when compared with that of the previous year. In parts, this is due to federal uncertainty. It’s an uncertainty underlined by the Federal Government’s penchant for coal and tendency to blame renewables for recent blackouts in South Australia, all of which contradicts mounting scientific evidence that fossil fuels are a disaster for the climate. Indeed, recent reports are ‘highly doubtful’ that Australia will even succeed in reaching the Abbott-Turnbull Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 28 per cent renewables by 2030, which already falls well short of the commitments made by the UK, US, Germany and Canada.

Policy instability in the Federal Government is leaving lenders uncertain, and

nationally, the country is floundering.

Perhaps the ACT’s push will be all that gets the nation over the line in regards to meeting its Paris Agreement targets. As Rattenbury suggests, it is now that ‘local efforts on renewable energy are more important than ever.’

In fact, the vacuum created by the Federal Government’s indecisiveness in regards to renewable energy policy has actually allowed the ACT to secure large scale renewable investment – and at significantly lower prices than the Federal Government predicted.

Using a process of reverse auctions which began in 2012, companies competed to offer renewable energy at the lowest cost, as opposed to the usual auction process where the highest price is considered.

To keep prices low in the auctions process, a set price has been agreed on for the renewable energy produced, a price which will remain steady for the next twenty years and protect ACT consumers from fluctuations in the energy market. When market prices are higher than the agreed-on price, the generator pays the ACT electricity distributor, ActewAGL, and the savings are passed on to ACT consumers.

Two significant auctions, held in 2014 and 2015 respectively, created investment in 400 MW of wind generating capacity.

These five windfarms combined will deliver 50 per cent of the Territory’s 2020 electricity supply. The first auction delivered three farms, Ararat (80.5 MW) and Coonooer (19.4 MW), both in Victoria, and Hornsdale (100 MW) in South Australia. The second auction secured the Sapphire and Crookwell 2 Wind Farms.

The Sapphire Wind Farm is the largest in NSW and, when complete, will power around 48,000 ACT homes. The Crookwell 2 Wind Farm is set to be completed in September 2018 and will power 41,600 Canberra homes.

Wind will account for the bulk of renewable energy, as the five wind farms have a combined generating capacity of 600 MW, compared to only 40 MW generated from solar farms. According to Shane Rattenbury, ‘contracts have already been signed in order for the ACT to generate 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable solar and wind sources by 2020’.

The significance of this statement extends well beyond political rhetoric and showcases the ACT’s tangible support for the renewables sector.

And how does all of this affect you, the energy consumer? Well, the total cost of this effort is set to peak at $5.50 per household in 2020 and will decline from then on. But it is also likely that these costs will in fact be offset by mandatory energy efficiency measures – like the installation of free energy saving lightbulbs.

Of course, much as it is easy to say that the rest of Australia must follow the ACT’s lead – the territory has several significant advantages which have aided it in its quest for 100 per cent. The first is its relatively small geographical size, compared with other states, who will be tasked with having to secure a much larger pool of potential suppliers to guarantee constant supply. The ACT is also a compact jurisdiction, with little industry to power and none of the overdevelopment which characterises other states. Additionally, it already has the cheapest electricity prices.

The advantages of being the first mover are undeniable. The ACT got in first to secure the cheapest renewable energy in the country; now the rest will have to avoid saturating the market. It is likely that the renewable race amongst the other states will now begin, while the ACT can sit back – knowing it sits on the right side of history.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Learn // Environment

Greener Economy

Re-framing our future with a Green Collar Economy Text: Lydia J Kim Lydia is just a city gal hoping to make the world a greener and fairer place! Her column ‘Greener Economy’ will talk about some of the economic and political solutions that will help create a more equitable society as well as more liveable conditions for current and future generations. Stay tuned!

Climate change threatens to undo most developmental progress made thus far, increase food and water insecurity and widen the disparities between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.

Without a doubt, more and more people have begun to acknowledge the importance of environmental conservation, but the lack of political and corporate action relative to the quick deterioration of our planet is alarming.

This lies, in large part, within the ideology behind our current economic structure, driven by greed and short-sightedness. Neoliberalism has reduced its people to mere consumers, money-generators, prioritising monetary gain with a general disregard for well being of the global population. With every new product made, companies and their factories continue to pollute the air we breathe and the food and water we consume, and governments don’t seem very keen on stopping them from pumping money into the economy.

For the survival of mankind, we need drastic change.

This column has explored the very way in which current structures often fail on environmental and humanitarian grounds. From this point we have a choice. We can choose to view these issues as an inconvenient challenge, or alternatively, as a unique opportunity to re-think our future. I propose that, to subvert current trends, a new paradigm that integrates environment and equity considerations within our economy must be established. As Van Jones writes in his book The Green Collar Economy, this will benefit not only the environment, but more importantly change the lives of those who are most in need.

This framework logically stresses that unavoidable obstacles like climate change must be addressed properly, and sooner rather than later. Unnecessary government spending – for example on public health and food and water provision – made in efforts to quick-fix the repercussions of environmental depletion will drain governments of their assets.

The further we get from being able to solve the original problem, the more we will have to spend on tackling its consequences, and the harder it will become to solve the problem itself.

The first series of changes must be made by governments, who have an

opportunity to make tangible commitments to this philosophy. Whilst they do acknowledge environmental issues by establishing environmental laws and protection policies, there is still not enough action. Current legislation treats conservation and economic growth as separate entities when the two must actually go hand-in-hand. Politicians cannot continue to deceive the people into thinking that economic prosperity and environmental conservation are mutually exclusive.

Effective policies must be established and sternly enforced so that corporations are obliged to take responsibility for their carbon footprint and polluting production methods. Australia’s Carbon Tax was such one example. Ideally these policies would be enforced in line with international expectations outlined in the Paris Agreement. On the flip side, funding should be provided to corporations that try to transition to environmentally friendly production methods and incentivise green growth.

There is an opportunity for all future development to occur in ways that refrain from following in the footsteps of developed nations like the United States who has built its economy on an unsustainable over-dependence on crude oil.

We have the capacity to learn from and adopt successful environmental policies of countries such as Finland that not only aim to conserve its environment, but also emphasise the importance of investing in green technology.

Corporations also play a crucial role in reordering our economy and changing patterns of modern consumerism.

However, as they are legally bound to prioritise profit increase for shareholders, many use unsustainable production methods that are lower in cost and create greater short-term yield. For example, power generated by coal is much cheaper than installing solar panels that will produce as much energy.

But more and more companies seem to realise that greater environmental consciousness improves their own competitiveness. Improved corporate ethics become their selling-point to prospective investors and customers. Companies must continue this change by increasing energy efficiency and working towards a complete shift to renewable energy, whilst reducing carbon footprint in production and post-production as much as possible.

Some have already started on this path and continue to announce longterm plans to invest in environmentally-friendly projects. Last year, Tesla showcased its new solar roof tile that gathers roughly the same amount of solar power as traditional solar panels.

Soon to be available to the greater public, some experts say that this new technology has the power to revolutionise several industries.

Without an active civil society, government and corporate entities cannot be held accountable. As citizens, we have the right and responsibility to demand better policies from the government.

As consumers, we have the right and responsibility to demand sustainably produced goods and services. At the end of the day, it is also the people that must change. Notions such as ‘one person won’t make a difference’ have the chance to be replaced by a culture that integrates sustainable living into the norm.

A Green Collar Economy is the remedy that this money-driven world is desperately in need of. A shift in focus to prioritise environmental conservation within our economy will benefit the environment. However, this shift does not only refer to our efforts to stop polar ice caps from melting and to save our furry arctic friends, but also refers to helping those who fall victim to our insatiable consumption patterns. By re-framing our ambitions towards a more equitable society we’re giving everyone an equal chance at finding happiness in life.

Learn // Science

Issue 6, Vol. 67

50

3D Organ Printing: A Prospective Future?

Text: Sachini Poogoda

In March 2017, a Swedish team of researchers successfully managed to create new tissue from stem cells.

Stem cells have long intrigued scientists, and their importance is becoming increasingly clear. Just this year, the Australian of the Year award went to Alan Mackay-Sim for his work on using stem cells from the nose to treat spinal cord injury.

Whether it’s in our muscles, our bone marrow and even our brains, they are the things responsible for the regeneration of cells. They also have the unique ability to be coerced into differentiating into specific cell types, and this is what makes them so compelling. Harnessing their reparative power has always been a goal for scientists, and now it seems that stem cell research is opening doors in the medical field.

The Swedish study used cells from patients who had undergone knee surgery, reverting them into ‘pluripotent’ stem cells: stem cells that can differentiate into other types of cells. After combining the cells into a nanocellulose compound – which is what allowed them to survive – they were printed into a structure using a 3D bio-printer. Nanocellulose is a bioink, a material made from living cells that acts like a protective blanket around the extracted cells. The addition of growth factors saw the cells proliferate and form a cartilage structure that, under analysis, seems identical to normal cartilage.

In a media release, the leader of the research team, Stina Simonsson explains the technique: ‘We … harvested mediums from other cells that contain the signals that stem cells use to communicate with each other … In layman’s terms, our theory is that we managed to trick the cells into thinking that they aren’t alone.’

Not only is the survival of the cells during the printing stage a first, but

the tiny amount of cells actually needed to form the tissue is another. ‘We’re the first to succeed with it’, Simonsson declares, ‘and we did so without any animal testing whatsoever.’ The success suggests that cartilage may be grown from a patient’s own cells, and used to repair cartilage damage in joints, a glimmer of hope for osteoarthritis sufferers in particular.

For stem cells to be accepted into a patient’s body, the body’s immune system cannot recognise the cells as a foreign entity. Usually this requires sourcing from a matching donor. This research should allow cells to be taken from the patient’s themselves, side-stepping this technicality and reducing the risk of cell rejection.

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease in which cartilage becomes thin and begins to wear away. Damage builds up through the years and is often not detected until it is too late. Though there are treatments to relieve pain, there is no known cure. While Simonsson says that ‘the structure of the cellulose we used

might not be optimal for use in the human body [yet]’, this study still presents a leap forward in the ability to regenerate cartilage.

Possibly the most exciting part of the study is stated in the opening of the paper: ‘Three-dimensional bioprinting technology is anticipated to radically change regenerative medicine because it would enable tissues and organs to be printed on demand.’

The success of differentiating stem cells into cartilage, having them proliferate and survive, indicates that other types of specialised cells can be created. As the paper suggests, along with bio-printing technology, this could include organs and even bones.

While the 3D printing of organs may be slightly ambitious for the current moment, this success is still one to be celebrated, and one that holds countless possibilities for the future.

Pedal to the Metal: Pushing Solar Cars to the Limit Challenger Class, which has the most stringent design requirements, making it more difficult than the other classes.

To meet these requirements, we must push the engineering limits and be creative whilst operating within a budget.

As this is ANU’s first solar car entry, the team’s primary aim is to encourage student innovation and participation in the development of solar powered vehicles.

Text: Sally Wong

The ANU Solar Car Association (ASCA) and the team, MTAA Super Sol Invictus, will be entering ANU’s first solar car into the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Car Challenge. The competition attracts universities, corporations and high school students from around the world, who come to Australia to race

their Electric Vehicles from Darwin to Adelaide.

Solar cars enter into one of three classes: the Challenger, the Cruiser and the Adventure Class. The Challenger Class receives sleek and aerodynamic solar cars, built for maximum efficiency and high speeds. The Cruiser Class focuses on the practicality and looks for designs that can be utilised by everyday drivers in the future. ANU will be entering the

ANU’s solar car will have a single seat for the driver, four wheels and weigh approximately 200kg. On the upper side of the car, there will be an array of 260 Sunpower Solar Cells. As the car drives throughout the day, solar energy will be captured by the cells, converted into electrical energy and stored in 400 AA batteries with 4.95kWhr capacity. Ultimately, the battery will run the motor.

However, the battery will not be able to store enough energy to keep the solar car running throughout the night, so the car will only be driven from sunrise to sunset daily for the duration of the five-day long race. This gives the drivers an opportunity to rest and also the race team the ability to do any necessary repairs to the car throughout the night.

Since the first race in 1987, cars have developed both in regard to speed but also efficiency. In 2015, the winner was team Nuon from Delft University from the

Netherlands and averaged 91.75km/h.

In reality, commercially powered solar cars are many years off. The main limitations of this technology are energy storage and the cost and efficiency of solar cells. The number of solar cells that can fit on a car would not be able to generate enough electricity to power it at the speeds reached by modern cars. However, there is a lot of promising research being conducted on improving the efficiency of solar cells, and ANU researchers are no doubt leaders in the world. In fact, we hold the world record for the most efficient low-cost solar cells at 26 per cent efficiency. Every year it is exciting to see more innovation and more efficient vehicles racing in the World Solar Car Challenge.

The team are looking forward to showing off the car to the Public at our launch on 1 August.

Keep an eye out for us on social media; through our Facebook page, Instagram and the soon to be monthly newsletters.

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Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Learn // Business & Economics

THe millennial expense investigation Text: Luigi Falasconi

Millennials are spending their money differently from their parents and grandparents.

Let’s ask ourselves: why has this happened?

A recent survey by TD Bank reveals that this generation hang out with each other twice as much as Generation X and Baby Boomers. When it came to making payments, the TD Bank’s National Consumer Spending Index found that although Millennials make more unrestricted purchases and go out more frequently than other age groups, they spend up to 27 per cent less. In addition, Millennials tend to use cash, a debit card and checks more often and charge 22 per cent less than the ordinary consumer – averaging $5,200 and $3,300, respectively. On average, Americans spend $4,700 per year with a credit card, and $2,400 with cash, a debit card and checks for discretionary purchases. According to another study, only 37 per cent of Millennials were confident in managing their credit, while 70 per cent hold their savings and investments in cash. This is substantiated by the results of a different survey showing that seven out of 10 Millennials say they would prefer to use a debit card, rather than a credit card, for their purchases.

However, the average Millennial goes out 13 times each month, spending $103 for an average of $7.90 per transaction, which is relatively small when compared to nine trips with $122 of spend ($17 per transaction) for the average consumer. Hence, a significant finding of the survey is that they spend less per month on purchases than their older cohorts.

American consumers shell out an average of $1,000 each month on discretionary items like eating out, buying clothes and travel, and roughly $1,600 each month on bills such as rent or mortgage

payments. This comes up to a grand total of $32,000 annually (excluding car payments, debt repayments or healthcare). Millennials, however, spend about $26,000 per year, which is 27 per cent less than Generation X and 23 per cent less than Baby Boomers.

In fact, the only category where Millennials spent more than Gen X and Boomers is on coffee and fast food – demonstrating a need for food on the run and frequent doses of caffeine.

Millennials are doing a good job of being frugal, but Julie Pukas, head of US bankcard and merchant solutions at TD Bank, said sometimes skipping the credit cards isn’t a good idea because ‘without a balanced spend on credit consumers are passing up cash rewards and the opportunity to build their credit profile.’

While the survey paints a picture of Millennials’ thriftiness, we could tell the same story but from another perspective: some believe that this change of attitude shows that the value that Millennials place on having experiences.

The Baby Boomer generation, which was one of the biggest consumer generations ever, were marked by their ownership of anything and everything. It was a sign of success. Today, owning a product is easy. Even the poorest person can own a cell phone if they really want to. Owning something means nothing. It’s possible to say that it’s become something that’s expected of people.

And so, Millennials are looking elsewhere. For them, experience is worth more. It’s why more and more Millennials are maximising productivity by working from home. Their lifestyle is more important than the concept of following a traditional career only to buy a bigger car or house. And the difference is significant.

According to one study, 52 per cent of consumers from the Millennial generation are spending money on experiencerelated purchases.

They are looking for experiences that provide them with a lasting impression; they want the chance to connect with new people. It’s why more and more Millennials are becoming the so-called ‘Generation Rent’, where they are determined to spend their disposable income on experiences instead of solid assets for the future.

One thing that they’re willing to spend their money on is travel. But not only that, they value all sorts of experiences – live performances, sporting events, concerts, and other social events – much more than they value possessions or even achieving a particular career status.

Social media is also responsible for a shift in how Millennials are spending.

The fact is everyone can talk about their lives and find out about the lives of others, which has only been possible with this generation.

Millennials want to feel like they are connected. They are also scared of missing out.

Technology has helped to drive this shift, and it has led to the growth of the experience economy.

And there’s also the fact that the world today is radically different. Millennials have really been dealt a tough hand.

Since many of them grew up during the Financial Crisis, the worst recession our nation has experienced in decades, they tend to be more averse to debt: and paradoxically, they’re still bearing an immense amount of student loan debt.

Millennials have had access to much less money than prior generations due to unemployment levels and low salaries, so they’ve had to be strategic about how they manage their finances and prioritise their spending. They’re putting off marriage to avoid the expense of the wedding; they aren’t buying cars and homes at the rates that prior generations have, instead opting for car-sharing programs and group homes or staying with mom and dad. They’re doing relatively well, however, at planning for retirement. Additionally, they’re not investing in the stock market like older generations either.

Millennials are different from other generations in a variety of ways, and their shopping habits are no exception: they are taking centre stage. They are now making up the majority of the workforce in both the US and Canada, and for businesses, this has marked a big shift.

CEOs are wondering why sales are down and why they are still relying on the older generations to meet their financial targets. Attracting Millennial buyers is the next great challenge for companies today.

Learn // Business & Economics

Issue 6, Vol. 67

52

Corporations as Advocates: A mixed story Text: Nick Blood

The topic of corporate advocacy is a complicated and broad issue, involving not only a wide range of causes but also a wealth of different approaches that shape how exactly a corporation chooses to advocate for them. The issue was foregrounded recently with the arrival of two high-profile advertisements from multinational corporations Pepsi and Heineken.

Pepsi’s ad was a strange beast, an attempt to build an association between their brand and the Millennial generation; specifically, those parts of it that identify as activists and protesters. It was criticised as inauthentic, pandering and patronising – and even for appropriating the imagery of movements such as Black Lives Matter. The anti-authoritarian sentiment, so familiar and commonly associated with youth, was distilled into montages of culturally and linguistically diverse teens abandoning their music jams, zine-building and photo shoots to join a protest rally alongside other clearskinned youths with perfect teeth. Holding placards showing peace signs in the colour palette of a Pepsi logo, the march and its cause remained vague beyond a generic ‘peace, love and understanding’ motif. While notionally a positive and inclusive cause, being as non-specific as possible also transparently served the marketing motivation to generate mass appeal. The commodification of ‘resistance’ was as blatant as it was awk wa rd.

Tr u l y weird stuff.

gether, and only afterwards, were treated to video statements of their counterparts denying evidence-based science on climate change, equal rights for women, and the humanity of transgender people.

Due to the widespread criticism and mockery, the ad was pulled, and apologies were issued.

Meanwhile, Heineken’s ad took a more targeted and ‘savvy’ approach, focusing on specific issues such as climate change, transgender rights and feminism. Strangers with opposing views on these matters were put in a room together, engendering a sense of imminent and inevitable conflict.

They spent considerable time together, however, before being made aware of the setup. They humanised each other through conversation and w o r ki ng to-

The way I’ve framed those views above highlights one of the key criticisms of this ad. While it was far better received, even held aloft as an example to Pepsi of ‘how to do it right’, it was still importantly flawed. As Jezebel’s Kara Brown wrote: ‘There’s a difference between people having different opinions and people having morally wrong opinions.’ Brown’s point is that Heineken is engaging in the same sins of ‘false equivalency’ that pervade Fox News panels, where climate change deniers are given equal platform alongside scientists. While Brown and others criticise this asymmetry in the ‘experiment’, one might also argue that it accurately reflects the realities of engaging on these issues. Transgender people, for example, often find themselves defending their humanity to people who would deny them of it. Scientists often find themselves facing widespread climate scepticism when the evidence does not support it. In a way, Heineken’s authenticity here may be a plus, by providing its broad message of advice on how to combat issues within a context that mirrors how they usually present in the real world. Whatever the case may be, the ad is an equally strange beast, and an equally complex example of how corporate advocacy works and is received.

By highlighting the topic of corporate advocacy, however, these ads may have also narrowed our view of it. It’s tempting in the context of recent events to consider advocacy purely as an advertising endeavour, but corporations engage on issues in other ways too. ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ would be an

example of a different type of advocacy in which a cause is championed in an arguably more tangible way. Sweatshop-free clothing brands are advocates for social justice, for example, and they champion that cause by making fundamental changes to their business practices. Their actions may contribute to an overall advertising strategy, yet there is more happening here than just that.

To continue the beverage theme, we could look at how Coke does things. As the world’s most popular soft drink, they stand to benefit from the same approach to inclusivity and mass appeal that Pepsi tried, and often their advertising reflects that. Other projects of theirs, however, more actively engage with issues like transnational unity by actively attempting to build it. You may not have heard of Coke Studio, but it’s a great example of this. Originally formed in Pakistan to showcase that nation’s music, Coke Studio features live performances from a wide range of renowned musicians. Due to its success, the idea has since spread to neighbouring India. While the two nations are at times rivals on the world stage, the shows are enormously popular in both countries. It can be argued that the act of sharing of music helps to unite people across national borders, building mutual respect and understanding along the way.

Coke’s funding and stewardship of this program strikes me as a far better example of the kind of ‘success’ shown in the Heineken ad. This is because the positive change is not only likely more real and lasting, but importantly also, because it is large-scale. Popular Coke Studio songs get hits in the tens of millions.

Perhaps part of the success here derives from where the focus lies: on the project (the social good) and not its advertising potential. It’s a project first, and an ad second.

What these various examples show is that corporate advocacy is not any one thing. There will be spectacular failures like Pepsi and relatively quiet successes like Coke. There will be tokenistic changes, and there will be fundamental, structural shifts like businesses going sweatshop-free. What is also evident is the role of the consumer. While ‘ethical’ or ‘conscious consumerism’ remains a debated concept, we as consumers will continue to play a major role in shaping what modern corporate advocacy looks like, and what it can achieve.

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

53

Sport

Ben Freeman: Student and Ultramarathon Swimmer

Woroni TV sat down with ultramarathon swimmer and second-year student Ben Freeman to talk about his upcoming participation in the 20 Bridges and Catalina swim challenges, as well as how he balances uni work with training.

W: Hi Ben, you’re undertaking two massive swim challenges, could you tell us a little about them?

B: The first one I’m doing is a swim around Manhattan Island – it used to be called the Manhattan Marathon Swim but now it’s called the 20 Bridges Around Manhattan Island. It’s a 46km swim, you start at the East end you swim up and go down the Hudson River to finish. From there I’m going to fly to LA and swim the Catalina Channel, which is just off the coast of the mainland, and that’s a swim that’s done in the dark due to currents. You start the swim at midnight and swim through the morning, that’s a 33km swim.

W: In the dark es- W: How do you pecially, how do balance university you know where and swimming? you are going?

B: Good time management. I train in

W: What is the toughest part about a swim challenge?

B: On both swims there’s going to be a support boat, especially on the Catalina swim, guiding me across. On the boat I’ll have my support team, my mum and dad will come across and they’ll help do all the feeds and support stuff.

B: A lot of these marathons have a unique component to it that makes it so challenging. With Catalina it’s the dark, with Manhattan it’s the distance and with the Channel it’s how cold the water is. You’ve just got to take it one stroke at a time.

W: In the past you’ve completed some pretty amazing swim challenges at pretty young ages, what are some of your biggest accomplishments?

B: The first real ultramarathon I did was in 2014 when I did the Hong Kong half marathon swim, which was 15km.

From there I got a real passion for ultramarathon swimming because I had been doing open water swimming since about eight. I also decided that I wanted to swim the English Channel, so I signed up for that in 2015 and that was like the pinnacle of [my] open water swimming.

the morning and that really wakes me up – I get my classes and study done in the morning so I have a chance to relax in the afternoon before and after training. ANU has really provided me with a great environment to pursue my studies and my passion.

W: On average, how many hours are you swimming every week?

B: On average about 20 hours. On my bigger weeks I do about 130km in the pool which averages out to about 30 hours. I also try to do about four to five hours in the gym.

W: How do you see your swimming career fitting into your future?

B: Swimming instills a lot of good qualities which help set you up for a good career, whether that be time management or discipline and having that drive to get up and do something.

The full interview will be released by Woroni TV next week.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Satire

54

Love, Hate, Indifferent Text: Michael Gimmel

Hi all, Quick introduction, before we get stuck into what’s making waves around the globe. My name is Sidney Cider and I’ve recently been appointed Woroni’s new international art, travel, fashion and culture writer. It gives me great pleasure taking over from my colleagues, Ken and Stacey, who have really done some of Woroni’s best work over the past year.

In farewelling these two, how could I not mention their fine report on Chernobyl’s dating scene which won numerous miscellaneous online awards. It was also Woroni’s most-read story last year, which I think spoke to our Canberran audience in a way that no other report from Chernobyl has to date. I send my best regards to Ken and Stacey as they recover from acute radiation sickness.

Given the popularity of this section, Woroni’s expanding budget and the general direction of news media, our aim is to increase the number of cities, expensive hotels and decadent lunches I attend, to provide less content in a more compacted (and opinionated) form. The section will now be titled ‘Love, Hate and Indifference’ where – not dissimilar to Eat, Pray, Love – I will be bringing the world of art, fashion, travel and culture to riens personnes outside the champagne bubble. The strength of my views, as validated during high my school debating years, and the worldliness I picked up from a single family vacation

to New Zealand, makes this your mustread Woroni section.

Love: Rome is one of Europe’s dirtiest cities, so much so, that one could easily forget it was once the birthplace of ancient Italy.

Today, observing the Colosseum, you’d think it’d be better used as a rubbish storage facility. Tourists on the exterior take little notice as they meander to the next run-of-the-mill monument to capture a selfie never to be looked at again.

Yet, despite the untidiness, and not even mentioning the sleazy men, Rome sparkles. Nowhere in the world have I been so blessed as to have my coffees accompanied by a small San Pellegrino (also known as sparkling water, agua con gas, or eau pétillante). I’ll take a dump of a city any day just to wash down my espresso with a glass of its finest.

Hate: Closer to home, in Braddon, I was hoping to spend some quality time with The Blonde (my significant other) bar-hopping around the slew of trendy places that have popped up over the last year.

You know the ones: the cocktail bar doubling as a speakeasy, or the brewery that feels like a bike shop. However, what was supposed to be a casual weekday Date Night had the intensity of being stuck between the sets of Love Actually and 10 Things I Hate About You. Each venue teemed with awkward couples, radiating all the nervous tension of Valentine’s Day.

This is all Tinder’s fault. Hip dominions are being swamped and subsequently ruined by these faux daters. You can pick them a mile away: over-dressed, overly nervous, pretending to listen intently whilst wistfully gazing into each other’s eyes, replying only in superlatives (that’s so amazing!) The atmosphere has gone from habitable Earth to an asphyxiating Mars.

What were casual hangouts have now been transformed into anxious interview rooms, where potential couples try to outdo surrounding matches by appearing more attractive, funny, suitable, etc. This would be ok if it was only one couple here or there, but literally every venue in Braddon on a random Tuesday night is bursting with hypedup sexual tension. Not only did I feel under dressed (which I never am), but I felt as though I actually had to pretend to engage with The Blonde. I felt compelled to use exaggerated gesticulations and vivid facial expressions, as everyone else around me predatorily lent in towards their partner ready to suck their face off.

Indifferent: The timing couldn’t have been worse for us last month, as Woroni had organised an interview with Kendall Jenner in LA. Considering the hoo-ha over the recent Pepsi campaign, Jenner had to cancel our interview. On the bright side, she did keep us informed of some upcoming commercials she’ll be involved in – similarly seeking to promote prominent brands whilst

cleverly subverting other civil rights movements. In an exclusive, Woroni can reveal that a prominent bus manufacturer is casting Jenner as Rosa Parks, to promote their new line of ecofriendly coaches.

In all honestly though, I don’t get what all the fuss is about. By all objective standards, the Pepsi ad was hardly Kendall’s best performance, but I wouldn’t say it was worse than Keeping Up With the Kardashians. The advertising format restricts what actors can convey, without having much time to showcase their true talent. Personally, I think a 15-minute extended version of the ad would have worked more in Jenner’s favour. So, in considering the hottest and most divisive topic of Hollywood conversation this month, I’m at a loss as to how this mediocre performance caused such outrage.

That’s all for today, darling – I’ll leave you with my style tip of the week. For all those students planning an exchange next semester and wanting to impress new exotic companions, the current trend is spending big on airport accoutrements. That’s right: luggage, of the Louis Vuitton ilk. It has become the new quick way to embody your value – in other words your socioeconomic status.

So throw away the passport, forget your wallet, don’t even worry about filling the bag; because if The Darjeeling Limited has taught us anything, it’s that every great adventure requires exquisite impedimenta.

Outrage over lack of familial shock upon announcing Canberra move Text: Ollie Brown

A new ANU resident has been referred to pastoral care services after it was confirmed that not one single member of her family or friendship group had expressed concern over her decision to relocate to Canberra.

‘I didn’t know I was such a remarkable case,’ she said in a statement, ‘but since

I got here all anyone can joke about is the incredulity of their loved ones and the classic “Canberra’s not that bad” gag. Nobody even asked me why I would move from my inner-city hipster haven in the first place, or tried to be funny by paying out Canberra’s cultural scene.’

Woroni spoke to the student’s Senior Resident while both parties were rather inebriated on Thursday night. While he was unable to release the name or specific details of the case due to its highly

sensitive nature, he confirmed that the student had developed somewhat of an inferiority complex and was questioning how much her family actually loved her.

‘In that family, the level of support is so underwhelming that it makes my own siblings’ monosyllabic grunts over the phone sound like personalised love letters’, he said.

When pressed on the likely course of action and recovery plan for the student,

the Senior Resident stated: ‘I’ll probably offer her a drink or two and she should be right after that.’

He added, ‘Pastoral care concerns like this are why I took on this role. It definitely wasn’t for the authoritative polo shirt or the residential subsidy.’

Neither the student nor her family could be reached for comment.

55

Week 11, Semester 1, 2017

Satire

Dank Memes for Chifley Screens

Gucci or garbage? Haute Couture’s permission to throw everything away Text: Elizabeth Harris Elizabeth is a Canberra native studying a very rarely seen degree at the ANU – LLB/Arts. Her column seeks to incorporate hard truths (common in the legal world) and dank memes. Not wanting her memes to be dreams, Elizabeth hopes to be a pioneer in the art historical study of memes

In 2017, Gucci launched a new line of watches. Featuring motifs of red and white snakes – conspiracy theory: Unilodge owns Gucci, so it’s well worth investing in some Lodge merch – the glamorous timepieces were promoted in a meme advertising campaign operating under #TFWGucci. Although new Gucci is always something to be excited about, there was something sinister lurking behind the nihilistic captions (think ‘when you have Aquagym at 3pm but you need to accessorize your existential angst eternally’): Planned Obsolescence.

the ticking of the watch as time passes.

For a moment, perhaps the moment of buying, time stands still. The rush of an approved purchase causes such elation that the buyer is willing to violate other worldly possessions. The faceless, infallible business man immortalised in pieces such as The Son of Man by René Magritte – clad as a worshipper at the altar of capitalism in a suit jacket – pivots towards consumerism. Yet, as soon as that moment has passed, time will continue passing as the watch itself moves towards obsolescence.

Of course, Gucci is a capitalist enterprise; it depends heavily on cashed-up sugar daddies (and sugar mommas – we don’t discriminate) purchasing glittering products for their acolytes. However, high end fashion houses are not accustomed to encouraging waste, breakage, or outmodedness. Rather, haute couture is presented as something to be cherished, and passed on. Of everything I have read in Time magazine, my recurring memory is of advertisements for Patek Philippe watches, with the caption: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.’ Even more disturbing, is that this obsolescence refers not only to clothing, but to people.

In a consumer culture where we are increasingly comfortable with throwing away anything from a $10 top bought from Supré in year nine, to grandmama’s pearls – we have seen a resurgence of a Japanese art form which rebels against wastefulness. Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a method of repairing broken ceramics with a lacquer made with precious metals, such as gold and platinum.

It is linked to the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which espouses embracing flaws and imperfection. Cracks in ceramics are highlighted by kintsugi, rather than hidden – healing after damage is something to be celebrated, rather than obfuscated.

To take a step back, what we see in the series of 55 memes designed for Gucci’s campaign is a battle between the ephemeral and the permanent. The commonality of wispy moths and wilted or flaming flowers attests to the fact that these are memes depicting things not long meant for this world. In one meme, a man’s suit is ripped to better expose his new Gucci accessory. Ragged fabric frames the solid glass and metal of the watch. The ongoing destruction of the jacket (symbolised by fraying edges) sits harmoniously with

Contrast this practice pioneered in the late 15th century with the Kon Mari method, and the wave of consumerism (which also carries Gucci’s advertising department) is right before us. Of Japanese origin, the organising consultant who designed the method, Marie Kondo, espouses a mantra of ‘if it doesn’t bring you joy, throw it away.’ Indeed, she has been described as conducting a ‘war on stuff’ by the New York Times. She has described her practices of decluttering and reduction as a way of giving dignity back to objects. However, this is at odds with the conception of dignity alive in

kintsugi. Why throw away what has value, that which may be imperfect, but can be fixed?

But what is more disturbing than the disposing of objects, is the discarding of people. In another meme, flowers, held by a man wearing a new watch, die under the caption ‘When your girl doesn’t notice your new watch.’ In another, a woman adjusts the strap of her watch, holding a burning rose, accompanied by the statement ‘When he gets mad at you for being 3 hours late but you’re too fire to deal with that kind of attitude’. Ruptures occur between people when they become accustomed to throwing things away. It may be true that there are many fish in the sea, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon a lovely salmon.

There is value in learning not to throw things away, whether they be ceramics or boyfriends (it’s 100 per cent fine to call them things – Gucci implicitly endorses it). To turn to more timepiece-related news, in 2017 Phillips Watches auctioned off a 1940s Rolex (albeit one of only 12 made) for approximately $1,648,465. Now that may be an asset worth ripping a suit to show off. However, if we take a Gucci meme’s word as truth, the watch should have been in the bin as soon as a newer model came out.

Just like the hands of a clock, things have come full circle. From a watch which encourages over-consumption, to one which suggests retention is wiser, we can come to two conclusions. First, Lodge probably doesn’t own Gucci – we know how loathe they are to update facilities.

Retention is their middle name. Second, and having regard for the fashion house’s complete disregard for human relationships, we can summarise thus: #TFWGucciBecomesObsolete.

Issue 6, Vol. 67

Satire

56

Comic: Caitlin Setnicar

oroni Cryptic Cryptic 4 Crossword: NWJ

Solutions in next issue

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Woroni Cryptic 4 12 1

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20

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1 Chew lead! Endure an uncomfortable situation (4,3,6) 8 No feeling in emergency room digit (6)

ew lead! Endure an uncomfortable situation calculus function (8) 9 Essential 3,6) 11 Hornet riots only for rulers! (6) 12 Allocate! ends of 9 and 13 perhaps? (5)

feeling in emergency digit (6) and vehicle decay (6) 13 Vegetableroom

17 People of eminence, they say the restaurant is

sential calculus function (8) fully booked! (8)

18 Nips back and rotate (4)

rnet riots only for rulers! zoo is full(6) of smoked sausage (7) 19 Rich 20 A monitor? Cheer Kournikova! (6)

ocate! ends of 21 9 Environmental and 13 perhaps?

(5) digits? Good gardeners have them! (5,6)

getable and vehicle decay (6)

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ps back and rotate (4)

C 5 A T R

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P A N T S D 6 R A G D C K S V C 8 C T R E S

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1 Clean mind - return and indoctrinate (9) 2 Trial lot massages flat bread (8)

1 Clean mind - return and indoctrinate (9)

3 Bronzed man goes off topic (7) 4 Big wise bird in dish (4)

9

2 Trial lot massages flat bread (8)

5 Crazy man pertains to the moon and a parasite (7)

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6 Pill and two circles are illicit (5) 7 Sincere, arrange nearest (7)

4 Big wise bird in dish (4)

10 A stomach fix for forgiveness (10)

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5 Crazy man pertains to the moon and a parasite G 15 Wound covering, assistance for musical groups!

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6 Pill and two circles are illicit (5)

19 Fill up dutch shoe (4)

7 Sincere, arrange nearest (7) 10 A stomach fix for forgiveness (10) 14 Strangely arouse us with the champion of the pdfcrowd.com

R E B E E

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14 Strangely arouse us with the champion of the social contract (8)

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16 Dance crack? (6)

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cross

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Last issue’s Cryptic Crossword solution